The Button
by Angel Baby1
Summary: In a life tainted by magic and evil, Jim makes his way from a young age as the apprentice of a powerful medium and her monster slayer husband. Eventually, the stars call to him, whispering of an unnatural enemy. Something will have to be done about that. Something will also have to be done about the stubborn Vulcan who thinks one shared childhood adventure makes them friends.
1. The Ripple

AN: WELL, turns out I don't know how to create fics on here anymore. Thanks for being intuitive, website!

Anyway, this is a, like...I don't know what to call it. It's not strong enough to be called a crossover. But it takes place in a universe where Coraline and Beyond Belief (yes, the podcast) happened, hundreds of years passed, then BLAM Star Trek. You shouldn't have to know those fandoms for this to make sense (I hope). Anyway, HERE WE GO.

* * *

Chapter One: The Ripple

* * *

Jim found the key while he was digging a grave. It wasn't a deep grave; she wasn't a big cat. She wasn't even _Jim's_ cat. Most likely, she hadn't anybody's cat except her own.

Frank had killed her, though, in cold, senseless blood. That made her Jim's responsibility.

He didn't have the materials to make her a proper coffin, so her soft, broken body was tucked into a shoebox that used to hold Jim's secrets. The cat needed his box more than he did. If he couldn't save her from Frank, he could at least give her dignity.

Jim dug her grave out in the weed-covered waste that used to be a cornfield. Nobody but him came out here anymore, not since Sam ran away last year. No one would mess with her this far from the house.

A drop of blood splattered onto the lid of her casket when Jim twisted to pick it up. He rubbed at his nose, sore now but probably not broken, then swiped his dirty sleeve over the spot of red to clear it off her box. "Sorry," he murmured, knowing she couldn't hear. The first time he tried to set the box in its new resting place, it didn't quite fit. Jim felt a tickle of annoyance at himself for not even being good enough to estimate the correct size of the hole.

He put her aside, picked up the small trowel he'd filched from the garage, and worked on both deepening and widening her grave. It took ages. Early spring in Iowa wasn't the ideal time to be digging, but she hadn't chosen to be kicked to death by a psychopath, so Jim didn't hold her responsible. She deserved to be buried right, no matter how hard it was.

The hole got so deep he had to lay down to reach the bottom, which was when he hit something with a faint metallic _clunk._ A pipe? Jim squirmed forward to look more closely. No, it wasn't big enough for a pipe. It wasn't big at all. He chipped at the dirt to loosen it up, then wedged his trowel under the pile. A solid wiggle brought him back far enough from the grave that he could spill the dirt out and look for the item he'd hit.

It was a key, ancient and heavy like the kind that used to open doors hundreds of years ago. The decorative end was round with four holes punched through it and a raised outer ring that made it look like a button. What kind of door would this unlock? Jim looked around, wondering if there'd been another house here, once, long ago. Surely this key wouldn't work in his own home. The only doors that locked at home were the front and back, and those both had keypads. So what...?

Jim shook his head. "Sorry," he said again to the cat's memory. He tucked the key in his pocket and refocused. The hole was deep enough now that she fit with room to spare. Nothing would want her enough to dig this far down, nothing would even be able to smell her. Once she was settled in the ground, Jim sat back, wondering what to say. "Thank you," he finally began. "For being beautiful, I guess. For probably catching a lot of mice. I really liked watching you walk around the barn. I'm sorry you came here, though. I wish I could have warned you." He took a shaky break and looked up. "Please watch over her," he asked his father, "if she ends up where you are. She was good and deserved better."

His nose dripped again, down his chin and onto his jeans, mingling with the other blood and dirt he'd gotten from the beating he'd taken to escape with the cat's body. He hoped the cat and his dad could be happy together. He hoped no other cats came to take her old territory. He hoped someday to get away like Sam had. Maybe he'd even settle for getting away like the cat had. Like Dad had.

The key was cold in his pocket. Maybe he could find a door it fit and leave through it.

Jim wiped his nose and began pushing dirt back into the grave, over the cat in her little casket. He tamped it down as hard as he could, looking around until he found some good stones to uses as a marker. "Sleep well," he told her and began making his slow way back to the house.

He stopped in the garage first, to put the trowel back before anyone looked for it. Once that was done, he took a memorial walk around the barn, thinking of all the places he'd seen the cat, how carefully and gracefully she'd moved.

Something mewed, a teeny, desperate sound.

Jim froze, heart in his throat, and closed his eyes to listen.

It mewed again.

He crept toward a low, unkempt bush growing wild near the back of the barn. The mewing stopped, but something rustled inside. Jim pushed the leaves apart and found—

A kitten.

She'd had a kitten.

It was only a month or so old, fluffy black everywhere except for little white socks on each foot. Its eyes and ears were open, all angled toward Jim's intrusion, but it was too small to survive on its own. Too young. Another casualty of Frank's rage.

Anger curled in Jim's chest, wrapped tight around bitter resolve: The kitten would live. Jim would hide it somehow, keep it safe and cared for until it was big enough to live on its own.

"You're okay," Jim murmured to the kitten, already planning how the next month would have to go. "I'm going to protect you, and you're going to be okay. I'm sorry about your mom. I tried to save her. I won't let Frank hurt you, no matter what."

The kitten continued to watch him, not showing any of the fear he'd been expecting from an animal that had never had direct contact with people before. It stood up and walked toward him, confident if not very graceful, and stood up on his leg to paw at him. No.

To paw at the key in his pocket.

Jim drew it out, letting the kitten examine it. The kitten's little tail puffed as large as it could, a tiny bottle brush of emotion. "Pretty weird, right?" Jim asked with a smile.

The kitten swatted at it and fell over.

Jim grinned, reaching down to stroke a cautious finger over the kitten's head. "Come on," he said, emboldened enough by the kitten's tolerance of him to scoop it up. "Let's find you something to eat."

* * *

Jim ran.

He could hear Frank shouting in the living room, incoherent and thick with alcohol, and knew probably Frank wouldn't chase him. Frank almost never bothered. It wasn't worth risking a broken arm on though. Better to hide until his step-father forgot him and passed out than to stand his ground and get murdered.

The kitten, strong and slim at five months old, found him curled up under the stairs in the basement, arms around knees pulled tight against his chest. For a little while, she sat just out of reach, watching him. Jim didn't know how she got around the house without Frank noticing. He wished she would teach him.

Right now, though, he touched the bruise growing hot on his cheek to the wall beside him and wished she would find someplace to hide. Just in case.

The kitten didn't seem to share his concern. She flicked an ear back before turning away with a haughty lift of her nose. Jim watched her poke around the basement, a small shadow in the darkness, wondering what she was looking for. She snuffled and scratched and wedged herself into impossible spaces and he let her.

Then she started growling, low with menace, and he rushed toward the sound. She was behind an old wardrobe, big enough to be heavy but brittle enough that Jim could push it over without too much effort. The sound it made collapsing to the ground might as well have shaken the house. Frank had to have heard it, which meant Jim was now working against time to find the kitten and hide her before his step-father appeared.

She was spitting at a bit of pealing wallpaper. Jim grabbed her, intending to pull her back and away, but…

There was something _behind_ the wallpaper. Something like a little door. With a small, old-fashioned keyhole.

He heard Frank, already yelling, stomp over his head across the kitchen. He'd be at the door soon, blocking their exit.

Maybe this little door led somewhere. Maybe it didn't, but maybe even if it didn't, they could hide there.

Jim tore at the wallpaper, heart beating a hard counterpoint to Frank's feet above him. The paper fell apart like thousand-year-old parchment, scattering when Jim blew hard into the keyhole to clear it. He dug the button key out of his pocket, ignoring the kitten when she tried to scramble away.

The key fit.

Frank threw the basement door open, screaming, beating the wall with his beer bottle. Jim shoved the key into the lock and twisted it hard.

It unlocked as smoothly as though someone had oiled it just yesterday.

Jim yanked the door open, throwing the child-sized escape open to reveal—

A tunnel, colorful like a dream, made of soft cloth and warm stars, stretch back into safety, away from Frank and the farmhouse, too small for the adults who had so efficiently made his life a nightmare.

On the other end, a matching door opened. Someone called for him, worried and welcoming. "Jim?" she called. "Are you coming through?"

Nobody called him by name anymore, not even at school.

"Where are you, boy?" Frank growled from the bottom of the steps.

"We're here," the tunnel called fondly. "We're all here to love you, Jim. Come on!

"And don't forget the key."

Jim jerked the key from its slot, shoved it back in his pocket, and tumbled through the doorway, yanking it closed just after the kitten shot through after him.

He crawled through, knowing he was on his way somewhere beautiful, somewhere perfect, somewhere he could live without fear.

On the other side, he was met with light.

And his Mother.

"Hello, Jim," she said, smile warming every aspect of her face except the buttons that stood in place of her eyes. "We've been waiting for you."

* * *

"You should go," Jim panted, leaning back against the door that would never open for him again. He watched the tunnel to the Beldam's world collapse, flaking off like embers from a fire. "You can get through. You don't have to stay here."

The kitten huffed dismissively. She stepped up onto his stomach, sitting with a sense of poise that he would have believed if not for the anxious lashing of her tail. "We came in together," she said. "We'll leave that way, or not at all."

Jim shook his head. "Don't be stupid. _One_ of us should live, and you didn't even want to come here in the first—"

She whipped around to bite his chin. "Who's being _stupid?_ You only wanted this place to save you from _that_ place, and you think I'll do any better there? Your step-father will kill me, just like he killed my mom. Our only option is to stay here. We don't know what'll happen," she pointed out, curling up on him so her warmth could seep into the endless cold left in the wake of the Other Mother. "Maybe we'll end up somewhere better."

A sob broke its way out of Jim's throat. "We've already tried that." He lifted a shaking hand to touch the button sewn into his right eye. "Look how it turned out."

"But we killed her," the kitten growled. "We killed her and escaped. Nobody expected that. Maybe nobody will expect where we go after this."

"Her world is gone, and I'm a part of it now." Jim dug his fingers into the edge of the button that curved under his eyebrow, wishing he could pull it out, pull out his own eye and the link she'd made of it. "I can't get back to the world we came from, not with this. All that leaves is the tunnel, and that'll be gone in…less than a minute."

The kitten began to purr, a rumble of comfort as the very ground underneath them disintegrated. "If we go," she said softly, "we go together."

Jim pet a shaking hand down her back, closing the eye that was left to him. "Together," he murmured.

Everything faded. Their lives went dark.

Endless time stretched out around them.

A knock sounded.

* * *

High above Park Avenue, in her cozy New York penthouse apartment, Sadie Doyle felt the tunnel between worlds collapse. She didn't know what it was, at first—her gifts for the paranormal tended more toward the spiritual than the interdimensional. But she knew for sure that _something_ had happened.

She took a fortifying gulp to drain her martini and straightened from her lounge against the counter in the kitchen. "Another, Frank," she said, sliding the glass toward where her husband of ever so many steadfast, countless years stood debating between two brands of vodka. "I'm afraid we might have company soon."

"Company? At this hour? Pah!" Frank said, pouring most of both bottles into a pint glass. He filled another glass about the same and handed one to Sadie, lifting his to clink against hers before beginning his customary chug.

"I do not believe the guest cares much for the hour," Sadie admitted against the lip of her glass while she began a curious meander toward the far wall of the living room (no, not the one sporting their brilliantly converted floor-to-ceiling bar—the other one). "In fact, I think they're already here."

"Where?" Frank called from the kitchen.

Sadie touched the fingers of one hand to the wall, feeling it tingle with life inappropriate to its existence. "Well, darling, here. In the wall. There's something just on the other side."

Frank stepped up beside her with a disgruntled expression, a drink in either hand and one tucked into his elbow for either when Sadie finished hers or when he finished both of his, whichever came first. "That's terribly rude of them, to come in through the wall and not even use the door. Why I have half a mind not to try to get them out of there at all! If they want to go around barging into people's structural foundations, they should have to live with the consequences."

"Normally I'd agree," Sadie said, switching her empty glass for the one at Frank's elbow, "but it would be terribly inconvenient to have an unknown _something_ lurking in our walls. We must also not forget that Sadie is an impeccable hostess," she reminded her husband, "but even she cannot serve drinks to a _wall._ "

"You make an excellent point, Sadistic." Frank clinked his glass to hers when she giggled in agreement and then turned firmly to the wall. "Now see here," he began in his most serious voice. "We simply cannot have things living in our walls. Shoo! Shoo or we'll shoo you! Don't make me come in there, young….thing," he concluded with a frown.

The wall did not respond.

"Darling, I think…" Sadie tilted her head, trying to parse what she was feeling from the wall. "I think they can't come out on their own. They're—stuck. Part of them can't be here where we are. Why, they're not in the wall at all!" she realized. "They're _in between!_ I really wish you'd mentioned," she added to the wall. "Frank, be a dear and fetch my chalk. We'll get this sorted out in no time."

Once she had the chalk and a fresh drink, Sadie stood back for a second to consider her options. The point of _wrongness_ that wouldn't let it through to their world was small, but strong. She couldn't remove it. A normal binding for a ghost or demon wouldn't work either; not specific enough. Maybe she could banish the entire creature, whatever it was. It just…didn't seem to _deserve_ it. The overwhelming emotion coming from the wall was sadness, followed by despair, chased by a heavy dose of worry. But there was no guilt, no anger, malice, thirst for revenge.

So she wanted to save it, poor thing, to bind the point and pull it through, figure out what it needed and send it on its way, as she and Frank had done in some form or another for any number of creatures throughout their years together. It was already here, anyway. They would have to do _something._

"I have it!" she decided finally, finishing her drink before approaching the wall. "Just the right binding." It was the word of seconds to get the sigil placed properly on the wall, drawn in her flowing script.

The sigil burned brightly for a moment, charring the wall and the space behind it. Whatever it was they were freeing groaned loudly. A little door appeared at eye level, swinging open to dump a boy onto their carpet before shutting with a snap and vanishing.

"Another point to the Doyles!" Sadie cheered, accepting a victory martini from Frank when he handed it to her.

The boy made a small, wounded noise and rolled over onto his back. A kitten stood on his chest, puffed up mightily in outrage. "I won't let you hurt him," the kitten hissed.

"Oh no, talking animals _again_?" Frank groaned. "After the last time, we passed a strict No Singing rule around here, so you keep that to yourself."

"The only one who'll be singing around here is you," the kitten spat, "if you so much as touch him. I'll bite you so hard you'll be a soprano!"

"Sounds fair," Frank said. "Sadie love, you heard her. Our work here is done! Let's have a drink and put this whole day behind us."

"Now Frank, you know we can't just leave him there," Sadie said.

"…Can't we though?"

"No, we most certainly cannot. We've helped the boy this far, we have to see it through."

Frank sighed.

"We don't need your help," the kitten growled. "People _helping_ is what got us here in the first place!"

"We're not that kind of help, darling," Sadie murmured, kneeling so the kitten didn't have to tilt her head back quite so far. "We've been helping people set things to right for simply ages. Why, we've saved people from Pans and Cthulhus and vampires and skeletons and ever so many other creatures. It's what we do."

"Even when we don't want to," Frank agreed from his place at the nearest bar, pouring them more drinks. "Which is always."

"Even then," Sadie laughed. "I'm not sure how you and the boy ended up trapped in an in between, but you're out now, aren't you? We helped you get back, and now we'll help you get home. Let us make a little call for you, and this will all be over."

"It'll never be over," the kitten said, filled with despair Sadie hadn't thought animals capable of.

The boy stirred, eyes opening in a slow, reluctant blink. He stared at the ceiling. Fat, helpless tears began gathering in his right eye to roll down his cheek and onto the carpet. The left eye remained dry and blank. "I killed her," he whispered, voice broken and dry.

"Who, darling?" Sadie asked, leaning over him to hear better.

His left eye was darker than the right, with four spots of the pale blue showing through in a horrible, recognizable pattern. A button.

He'd let her sew a button.

"The Beldam," he croaked.

"You killed a _Beldam_?" Frank demanded. " _You_ killed it?"

The boy didn't answer. Even the kitten refused to make a sound in confirmation.

"We can't keep him," Frank warned Sadie.

"Of course not," Sadie agreed, standing to accept the fresh martini Frank had made for her. "But we can't send him back wherever he came from, either. Beldams don't prey on happiness, after all. Especially now that he's half… Well. We can't send him back."

"And we can't keep him," Frank added.

"No," Sadie agreed again. She crossed to the kitchen where their barely-used telephone sat under a pile of discarded gin bottles. " _We_ might not be a place for a child, but we know a family who would be simply perfect: The Hendersons, those darling people, have already raised a perfectly healthy harbinger of the apocalypse. Surely a small boy won't be any more difficult than that."

"Say," Frank mused while Sadie placed her call, "do we _know_ any Hendersons?"

"Of course, Frankenstein. You remember, Donna Henderson is a vampire and my oldest friend. And her husband, Dave, has been a detective for simply ages. Oh, and he's a werewolf. They were at our wedding. We helped Donna against some persistent Nosferatu several times. Dave had us assist him in locating a vicious werewolf that ended up being a poor horse. They have a lamp?"

"The Hendersons!" Frank cried. "That was a very interesting lamp indeed."

"Yes exactly," Sadie giggled. Donna picked up and Sadie quickly explained their whole situation. Since the sun was out, Donna couldn't pick up the boy herself, so she sent her husband instead. The werewolf detective was able to soothe the kitten's rage, pick up his new ward, and leave with a friendly farewell. Within the hour, the entire incident was properly managed and promptly forgotten.

Until the Church came for the boy.

* * *

Donna Henderson wanted nothing more in the world than to meet the humans who had set Jim up to be a Beldam's victim and have them for dinner. Not in a neighborly way.

In a vampire way.

Jim didn't smell like his blood was particularly B-, but Donna didn't care if his family didn't taste good. They'd traumatized their child enough to send him to a Beldam on a silver platter. A meal made of them would be _delicious._

"There now, Jim," she said, tucking him in that first night. "This used to be my daughter's room, when she was very little, oh, this would have been a few hundred years ago now!" She sighed in happy memory. "They grow up so fast."

A little furrow appeared on Jim's brow: the first emotion Donna had seen. "A few hundred years?" he echoed.

The kitten jumped up to curl on his chest. "Humans don't live that long," she protested.

Donna ticked an eyebrow at her. "And cats don't talk."

"How do you know?" the kitten grumped.

"Well, you're right about one thing," Donna relented. "Humans _don't_ live that long. I guess you didn't hear Sadie earlier, because I'm not a human." She curled her lip up to show one fang. "Vampire," she explained unnecessarily. "My husband, Dave, who brought you here, he's a werewolf."

Jim's eyes were huge and round, one as blue as the sky, the other dark with the shadow of what he'd been tricked to give. "Werewolves are real?" he whispered. "And vampires? And…? What else? Is _everything_ real?"

"Everything worth mentioning," Donna agreed with a chuckle. "But don't you worry: I have a lot of experience protecting kids from things that want them. You wouldn't believe the number of creatures who thought my baby girl was a harbinger of the apocalypse and said they simply _had_ to have her for their various rituals. She grew up though," the vampire said, smiling warmly down at her little ward. "She grew up strong and safe. And you will too, as long as I'm around."

"But why?" Jim asked, good eye filled with tears again.

"I'm a mother, Jim." She stroked her hand over his hair. "It's what mothers do."

Jim shut his eyes.

"Not in our experience," the kitten said softly.

"Not so far, maybe," Donna said, giving the kitten a little scratch behind one ear. "From now on it'll be different. Before all that, though." She rubbed a hand down the kitten's back. "You need to think about picking a name. We can't just go around calling you _the kitten_ all the time."

"Kitten _is_ my name," she protested. "It's what Jim called me when he first found me, and when we were hiding from his step-father, and when we were killing the Beldam."

"It's not a very good name though," Jim said with a weak smile. "Mostly I didn't want to call you anything because I thought…I thought you could be free, once you were old enough. I thought you'd be able to leave and be your own cat, like your mom, and pick your own name."

"Well I do pick it," she insisted. "It's Kitten. Like it's _always_ been."

"Maybe we could compromise," Donna suggested. "How do you like Kit?"

Jim and the kitten looked at each other. "It's perfect," Kit said.

"It is," Jim agreed, resting a hand over back.

"Tomorrow Dave can take you to get Kit some supplies," Donna said. "I'm not so great with the sun, but it doesn't bother him. Then you can come back and we can figure out where to go from here."

"Are you going to send me back?" Jim asked without looking at her.

Donna touched his shoulder so he would lift his eyes to hers, so he could see her conviction and the blood rage burning in her stomach. "If they come for you," she said in low tones with a warm smile, "thinking they can take you back after feeding you to a Beldam? You'll get to see what a vampire mother does to protect her child. You're my ward now, Jim. _Mine._ I do not surrender anything that's mine."

"I'll make it up to you," Jim said, tears sliding down his cheek. "I'll find a way to make it up to you. You won't regret it."

"You might, someday," Donna admitted. "But it'll be too late to change anything by then."

Jim laughed, just a little brokenly, a shadow of what he must have been before. "It can't possibly be any _worse."_

"I cannot believe," Kit said, tail lashing, "that you would jinx us this way."

* * *

Dave Henderson did take them to get supplies for Kit. After that, though, he took them to the family doctor, Ezekiel Wentworth, for a thorough exam. The doctor didn't specialize in cats, but he'd been around for years uncounted and figured out enough to get by. Then he turned his attention to Jim, who felt a little...apprehensive.

Dr. Wentworth was a skeleton. He wore a newsboy cap and a gold watch that rattled against his wrist, but he was a _skeleton._

"How're you doing this?" Jim wondered. The skeleton lifted his stethoscope from where it draped around his stark white vertebrae. He spread the headset to wedge earpieces against the curve of bone where ears would be if he had anything resembling flesh, then pressed the diaphragm to Jim's shirt. "Are you… Is someone controlling it?" Jim asked Mr. Henderson. Kit sat as tall as she could beside Jim, tail lashing in response to her curiosity. She hadn't spoken yet today; Jim wanted to know why, but not enough to corner her into answering in public.

Dave Henderson glanced sidelong at Dr. Wentworth, who carried on with the exam as though Jim hadn't spoken. "Dr. Wentworth is a medical professional," Mr. Henderson said, New York accent think around the calming words, "respected in his community and often requested by families of…less conventional makeup. He also happens to be a magically animated skeleton. Nothing says he can't be both, and very successfully at that."

"What made you give her the eye?" Dr. Wentworth asked, something faintly British under layers of crotchety old man.

"I thought—" Jim looked down and swallowed hard, petting Kit when she bumped her head into his elbow. "I thought she loved me."

"Did you really," the skeleton mused, cold bone fingers touching Jim's chin to make him look up at the light hanging from the ceiling of Dr. Wentworth's examination room.

Tears welled in Jim's right eye. "No," he admitted. "But she said she loved me. She seemed to mean it, even if it wasn't really true. She gave me everything she thought I wanted, and going back to…" He scrubbed the moisture from his cheek once it fell. "Going away seemed like it'd be worse than giving her what she wanted and getting to stay. So I let her. Kit stopped her before she could do the other."

Dr. Wentworth reached towards Jim's button-shadowed eye with one long, thin finger, like he would prod the cornea without thought for any pain it might cause Jim. Darkness ate its way out of the eye toward Dr. Wentworth's extended finger, crackling before the two could touch. "Hmm." Dr. Wentworth stepped away, hands clasped behind his back. Jim blinked, and the black vanished. "How old are you, Jim?"

"Eleven," he whispered.

Dr. Wentworth made another thoughtful sound. His exam continued for half an hour, interspersed with questions and pauses while he took what seemed like a hundred pages of notes. "Dave isn't your guardian," the skeleton said when he was finally finished, "even though you're staying with him, so if you'd like, we can have him wait outside while we talk about how you're doing."

Jim shook his head, holding Kit tight when she stepped up onto his lap. "He can stay. If anything's…wrong now." He rubbed the knuckle of one hand under his left eye. "Well. The Hendersons should know."

"There can't be anything wrong with you," Mr. Henderson said with easy conviction, "that a werewolf and vampire who raised a harbinger of the End Times can't handle. I'll say it as often as you need me to, but you are safe with us, Jimmy."

Kit meowed her support while kneading Jim's knee.

Dr. Wentworth shuffled through his stack of papers. "You're too skinny," he began. "Dave and Donna need to get you up at least ten percent above where you are. That goes for you too," he added to Kit, who flicked an ear at him. "The bad nutrition hasn't hurt your growth yet, but it will if it goes on much longer. Don't wanna be short? Eat something."

"Donna gave me a grocery list," Mr. Henderson assured the doctor. "We're going to set up a subscription with the local farmer's market, get everything fresh and healthy that a growing boy needs."

"Good." The doctor flipped a few pages further. "Signs of multiple old injuries, but most of your recent Beldam-related problems seem to be bruises, cuts, and that thing." He jabbed a forefinger at Jim's darkened eye. "I won't sugarcoat it. A Beldam's buttons are a link to her. Generally she uses them to drain the life out of her victims, but you killed her before that happened. There's no way of knowing if she'll regenerate, or when, or what that might mean for your souvenir. Monitor any changes and report them."

"Yes sir," Jim said when the skeleton seemed to be waiting for a reply.

"We'll keep an eye on it too, so to speak," Mr. Henderson promised. "We might be able to notice something Jim doesn't, being what we are."

"That's another thing." Dr. Wentworth snapped Jim's file shut. "Your human left eye, as you probably noticed, is blind. But you're still seeing things, aren't you?"

"Shadows," Jim agreed in a murmur. "Sometimes colors, around people, or…flashes of things. I don't know what it is."

"You're masking it well," Dr. Wentworth said suspiciously. "I'll chalk that up to your…previous upbringing. Don't continue the habit." He shook a finger bone in Jim's face. "This is serious, young man. If your guardians don't know what your new baseline normal is, they won't know to report changes. As for the new things you're seeing, my best guess is the button eye is tied to the Beldam, whose nasty little web is an Other place. I suppose we can move forward with the hypothesis that your left eye is now _Other_ as well, seeing things from that perspective. Sometimes that might layer neatly with the here world your right eye sees. It won't always. You might think about getting a dog or something that can alert you if—"

Kit spit and hissed until the doctor rattled his hands at her, spooking her behind Jim's back. "I think she can tell what _Other_ things are too," Jim said, twisting his arm around to pet her. "She knew what the key was, I think, the first time I met her. She knew I had something in my pocket, anyway. She knew where the door was too, and tried to stop me going through. I don't need a dog; Kit will help me."

Dr. Wentworth made another note. "That's all I have, for now," he said to Mr. Henderson. "Feed him; keep an eye on the eye; I'd recommend strongly that you keep as much about Jim's…unique history as possible on a strict need-to-know basis. You know very well what _certain elements_ think about creatures like Jim."

"Creatures?" Jim echoed uncertainly.

"You're not human anymore," the doctor told him plainly. "Not fully. You're something else, something in between. Something—"

"Other," Jim whispered, eyes lowered.

Mr. Henderson ran a large, comforting hand over his head. "What's a werewolf, other than Other?" he asked. "Or a vampire? Or a magical skeleton? Don't worry too much about it, Jimmy. It's just a word."

Jim nodded, not in belief or agreement, but because he couldn't think of a polite way to reply without melting into the hysterics he could feel bubbling just under his skin. Kit headbutted his elbow again. Mr. Henderson wrapped an arm around his shoulders to help him down from the exam table.

"I want twice-yearly appointments until we figure this out a little better," Dr. Wentworth insisted. "Pick a date with my receptionist, Gertrude, on your way out. If she's not there, just shake the tattered book on her desk. Then you can tell her what day works best for you. Okay? Okay. Get out. It's lunchtime, go feed that boy a steak or two."

All the books on Gertrude's desk were tattered. While Mr. Henderson resignedly began shaking each of the multitude one by one, Jim thought about how he could help. None of the books seemed to stand out in any way that said "able to call secretaries, somehow". Or, at least…

Not to his right eye, anyway. But his left—

Maybe it could actually serve a purpose.

Jim looked down at Kit where she stood twined around his ankles. He squinted at her, trying to see if he could _make_ the weird Other-flickers appear. When that didn't work, he shut his right eye, wondering if cutting of his real world vision would force the button eye to focus.

He couldn't see Kit through the blind eye. A faint, dim silver mist hung where she should be, fit so tight to her that he was able to make out nearly her entire shape. Everything outside her glow was black, filled with pale wisps of…light, or color, or…

He didn't know.

Keeping his right eye shut tight, Jim lifted his head, trying to see more of the Other. Some of the mist traced forward and up, fanning out to form a huge cloak of darkness even more profound than the nothing around it, highlighted in stark white like the light of a full moon. It spread out and down, like a blanket thrown over broad shoulders, with a hood float high above where a head would be.

It noticed him.

The hood twisted in a silent snap, a predator sense prey, and grinned at him with a wolf's toothy mouth. Red eyes glowed above the muzzle, so brightly they cast crimson highlights along the jaw and ears, pricked forward in attention. Somewhere, faintly, a wolf howled.

"Are you alright, Jim?"

Jim gasped air into his lungs, right eye popping open to show Dave Henderson standing beneath and inside the hungry, waiting cloak. _Werewolf,_ the boy remembered, heart racing like it could escape the watching red eyes.

Mr. Henderson's expression filled with concern. The shadowed wolf above him seemed to laugh. "Jim?" the man said again, soft and calm. "Would you like to go back in and see Dr. Wentworth?"

"No," Jim managed between numb lips. "I'm okay. Just…got a little lost in thought. Bad memories."

The werewolf nodded, warm with compassion, and turned back to his search for Gertrude's book.

Jim looked down at Kit, at her worried face and faint, gleaming aura. When he shut his right eye, he maintained a slight after-image of her, standing tense within the glow. He blinked several times to clear his eyes, then looked at the stack of books, trying to ignore the barely visible cloak settled heavy on Dave Henderson's shoulders.

When he thought he had a good memory of which book was where, Jim shut his right eye. Kit's and Mr. Henderson's Other light tried to distracted him, but he focused hard. Sure enough, one of the books was glowing. Jim stepped forward and slightly around the desk to get a better look.

Sickly yellow light shone out in the shape of pages, as though the cover wasn't Other but the words themselves were. Jim touched just one cautious finger to the outside, feeling the tattered physical form. He opened the book so its light could shine out.

To his button eye, the light _screamed_ out of the book, breaking as it did to form endless gaping mouths turned down in pain or sorrow or despair. His good eye flashed open, adding a layer of reality to the scene. A woman shimmered into view within the spewing yellow light—a ghost, haunting this book. She looked, to his right eye, like a pleasant, unassuming old woman. She spoke to Dave cheerfully, getting details for their next appointment.

His button eye saw her as a wailing, melting creature, the light of her haunting pulling through itself to cut open more gaping, screaming mouths. Her Other voice echoed faintly just at the threshold of what Jim could hear, wordless pleas and moans. Jim's heart thundered until he thought it would stop, aching in his chest. He groped at the book, wanting to stop her, wanting to help her, wanting the chill of her screaming to silence.

Dave Henderson touched his back.

Jim's entire body coiled in a flinch. The hand he had resting on the book pushed down and away, knocking surrounding volume onto the ground. His physical touch on the book didn't slide.

His Other touch, some extension of the Beldam's power reaching out through their tether, slipped across the pages, tearing something just outside his understanding.

Gertrude blinked, looking startled. Her gaze dropped to the book, to the gap between her ghostly form and the object she existed for, cut through her connection to whatever feeling or deed she'd stayed so long for. The ghost's eyes shut. Golden light spread through her like a fire.

She was gone.

In the silence that followed, Dr. Wentworth clattered out into the waiting room trailing a litany of curses. "What did you do?" he demanded, wrapping a skeletal hand over one of Jim's shoulders.

The black fire that had reached for him earlier crackled over his hand now, eating up toward his elbow.

Dr. Wentworth drew his hand back with a hiss. "How did you learn magic in the space of _ten minutes?"_ he asked Jim with a scowl.

"I didn't," Jim stammered. "I just wanted to find the right book, but then it screamed at me, and I didn't—"

"You exorcised the best secretary I've had in _centuries!"_

"It was an accident—"

"It seems to me," Mr. Henderson cut in, polite but firm, "that you were, not just minutes ago, warning Jim that his eye could be a connection to the Beldam's power. If you didn't know enough at the time to warn him about accidentally exorcising secretaries, I do not see how he, a mere boy of eleven, could be expected to guess this outcome. But then, I am only a detective, and not a supernatural doctor, and could be mistaken. Perhaps you did know, and kept it to yourself. For unspecified reasons. Let us call this a new symptom and make note of it for future visits."

Dr. Wentworth grumbled, threw Gertrude's book away, made a follow-up appointment on his own, and rattled back to his office.

Jim looked up to find Mr. Henderson looking down at him with a thoughtful expression. "I think, Jim," he began, "that you might be more than just not human. You might be downright magical, which might require some…specialized education. I'll tell Donna, and we'll find a good teacher for you."

"You aren't mad?" Jim whispered. Mr. Henderson held out his hand. Jim latched onto it immediately, letting himself be led from the office with Kit trotting at his side.

"There isn't anything to be mad about," Mr. Henderson said. "If you think you're the first supernatural child to do something unexpected, well, I have a few stories that might surprise you."

Jim offered Mr. Henderson a shaky smile. "Like what?"

Mr. Henderson shook his arm in a gentle, friendly tease. "How about I tell you over lunch? I believe the doctor prescribed some steak, and I know a good spot around here to fit that bill."

After a quiet minute of walking, Jim gathered all his courage to ask, "Is Gertrude okay? Wherever I sent her? Or, I mean…she's not hurt, is she?"

"When a ghost is cut off from its tether to this world," Mr. Henderson said, looking both ways before leading them across the street, "generally that ghost goes to either one of the heavens, or one of the hells, in the area. Sometimes a powerful psychic can send them farther. Mrs. Doyle once sent a ghost all the way from hereabouts to the Hawaii heaven. When Gertrude left this mortal coil for the final time, she did so in a wash of gold. I'm very certain that means she is comfortably in one of the heavens, enjoying herself more than she ever could as a spectral secretary."

Jim thought about that for a long time. " _One_ of the heavens?" he asked at last, while their food was being delivered.

Mr. Henderson chuckled. "Don't worry, my boy." He reached over to pat one of Jim's hands. "We'll get you a teacher who knows all about it. Now, let us begin our storytelling with one of my favorites: The time Michelle, my daughter and a foretold vessel of the Old Ones, broke a lamp and nearly ended the world."

Jim settled in with his meal, content to listen while Mr. Henderson talked and the shadow wolf above his head watched with a toothy grin.

* * *

Everything fell apart.

Donna and Dave spent weeks looking for just the right magical tutor, someone with enough knowledge to lay groundwork but the adaptability and courage to be willing to explore how Jim's button impacted his abilities. They also had to be discreet, to draw attention from…outside forces that might have unwholesome uses for Jim.

Nobody lived up to their expectations.

Once, Jim overheard them talking about the Doyles, Donna whispering how perfect they would be, Dave replying with a matter-of-fact assessment of their interest in a small boy's education.

"They likely do not remember so much as the event of his appearing here," Dave pointed out, "much less why they should care."

"Sadie cares!"

"That she does, my dear, but usually for singular, solvable, issues. Jim is not an issue, nor is he solvable, nor even could one call his continuing education 'singular'. He will require consistent, consecutive attention, perhaps for all of his life. That, I think you will agree, is not in keeping with the Doyles' charms, many and varied though they may be."

Donna sighed. "When you're right, you're right," she agreed wryly. "Say, though, thinking of the Doyles: Maybe that old Egyptian cat goddess friend of theirs might be interested in a little apprentice! Or didn't they know the manager of one of the nearby hells? He could know a thing or two about Beldam buttons."

"Two marvelous and worthwhile suggestions, my sweet. Let us give the Doyles a ring and see what they remember about those acquaintances."

The cat goddess, Bast, somewhat predictably, couldn't be tempted into even so much as a curiosity visit. Once she knew they wanted her to come, her nature made her incapable of complying. Dave confessed later that he didn't mind her not showing up: He wasn't much looking forward to having another cat in the house to outnumber him anyway.

At some point during the time between Bast falling through and trying to find a good time for the Archduke of the Staten Island Hell to swing by, word of Jim's exorcism of Gertrude got out. News like that spread quickly, especially to those whose ears were always open.

The Church came for him.

When Dave first opened the door to find a priest and two nuns waiting on his front porch, he froze, horror welling hot in stomach. Then slammed the door directly in their faces and pretended not to be at home.

"It's no use resisting," one of the nuns said while leaning on the doorbell. "We already know who he is and where he's from. You're listed as a runaway, James Tiberius Kirk, did you know that? And a famous one too. How _dreadful._ I'm sure your delightful stepfather will be only too glad to get you back."

Jim instinctively stepped back. Warm hands covered his shoulders. When he looked up, Donna stood over him, expression hard. "You listen here," she called, voice cold and black and endless, like the frozen chasm space between stars. "Jim is under my protection. He is _mine._ You will take him back to those abusive monsters over my ashy—"

"We don't _want_ to send him back," the priest said with simpering compassion. "Why, to be a Beldam's prey! The poor soul. But, you know, we also heard about Gertrude. I'm sure you understand, we can't have someone with that kind of power running around untrained. We'd be _more_ than happy to…fill the need. As it were."

"And use him as another boy solider in your war against the supernatural," Dave growled.

"Such hyperbole," the second nun tutted. "Although, now that you mention it, that _would_ be a pretty neat solution to the issue of _practice…"_

"Get out of here!" Donna shouted. "You leave us alone, do you hear? We'll find him a tutor on our own, _without_ you coming in to ruin everything!"

"Suit yourself," the first nun sing-songed. "But he _will_ agree to learning from the Church by the end of the week, or next time we bring the missing person's unit. I'm sure kidnapping will look _excellent_ on your yearly review, Dave. Tootaloo!"

Kit leapt off the top of the couch where she'd been prowling with her tail puffed up to run up to Dave and paw at his calf. "You won't let them send him back, will you? You both promised!"

Dave scooped her off the floor, dwarfing her in his hands. "We will not," he said flatly. "This is your home. We will find you a tutor and remove you permanently from your legal guardians. …Somehow."

Donna knelt in front of Jim, her hands solid on his shoulders. "Don't you worry," she told him with a smile. "We'll work this out."

"Why is a church so bad?" he asked, eyes darting between the wolf over Dave's head and the hollow-cheeked phantom twisted under Donna's skin. "Maybe…maybe I could learn from them but stay here with you? Maybe that wouldn't be so bad, if they know what they're doing."

Dave's mouth thinned, but it was Donna who said, aching with kindness, "Oh, sweetheart, no. That's not how the Church works. They don't want to train you, they want to _use_ you. They want you to become an expendable cog in their machine. They don't even much pretend to be a religious organization these days. Honestly, they dropped that centuries ago. What they want is to eradicate anything they think of as being monstrous, at as little cost to their own people as possible. So they find children like you, so special and talented, and throw them at their enemies. Nobody's survived them since— Gosh. For just ages. We can't let them have you, Jim. No matter what."

Jim reached up to grab her wrists. "But how do we stop them?" he asked desperately.

Donna and Dave traded a worried glance but didn't try to answer.

In all probability, they didn't have one.

He would have to go with them, Jim realized over dinner. To stop the Church from ruining Dave and Donna's lives, he would have to go to them. On his own.

So he did.

* * *

"There you go, Jim," Father John said with a wide, empty smile, holding out their Enrollment Book. "Just sign right here, and you're all set!"

Kit meowed at him from her spot between his ankles, protesting in the only way she could while surrounded by people who might kill her for speaking.

Jim ignored her, hoping the priest and his associates would do the same. They were all gathered toward the front of a large, decrepit church, right up against the slightly raised platform where the broken altar stood. They were in shadow, although the nuns had placed a podium for their sign-in initiation book directly in a beam of sunlight shining in through the roof, which…okay, so apparently they were big on pageantry.

They didn't glow when Jim looked at them through the button. They didn't so much as shimmer. To his blind left eye, they didn't exist, making them strangely flat in his regular vision. Interesting, that they wanted so badly to fight in the Other world without being part of it. Was that normal, or an exception?

"No dawdling," Sister Mary ordered.

Jim held out his open palm so Sister Theresa could set their ornate feather-tipped ballpoint pen in it. For just a moment, as he spun the pen around so he could hold it properly, Jim entertained the briefest daydream that Donna and Dave would find him, break in and save him from whatever hell he was submitting to. But he had to be reasonable. He wouldn't go back to Frank; he wouldn't ruin the Hendersons' lives; he had to join the Church.

Maybe it wouldn't be so bad.

Jim took a deep breath, squared his shoulders.

Set the pen to paper.

"I object!"

The doors at the far end of the church burst open, blown entirely off their hinges. Dave Henderson stood in the rubble, lowering the leg he'd kicked the doors in with, Donna at his side with a wide, sturdy parasol between her and the day's light. They stepped aside to let Frank and Sadie Doyle walk by.

"One does hate to drop in at the last moment," Sadie said, swirling her martini while she followed her husband down the aisle. "It's just ever so much _easier_ than trying to annul a contract sealed in a blood book. Badly done, darling," she added to Father John. "The boy is a minor, he shouldn't be asked to sign anything so binding until he's at _least_ had his first drink."

"You must think you're pretty clever," Frank said with a dangerous, threatening smile. "Taking a boy from his monster guardians, right under watchful eye of a couple of seasoned professionals."

"…Perhaps not watchful, though, Frank. In fairness, we did forget about any of this until Donna and Dave dropped by earlier."

"Fair," Frank agreed without looking away from Father John. "But now we remember, and _I_ remember what it is you do to impressionable young boys given over to your tender mercies. And if you think I'm doing this to save a child who fell out of my wall and went to live with close personal friends, let me tell you right now: Not in the least."

"Then why not let us settle this ourselves?" Sister Mary asked. "You clearly don't want the boy, and we do. We can train him. We'll help him survive."

"For a year or two, sure," Sadie said with a shrug. "But my dear friend Donna Henderson and her lovely husband want him longer than that, and what Sadie's friends want, Sadie provides for them."

"And what Sadie wants," Frank added, "Frank provides for her. That's not even mentioning the genuine delight I take in foiling any plan that has the Church's fingerprints on it. Your crummy organization got away with what it did to me. I won't let you do it to someone else."

"…We've been doing this for years," Father John pointed out. "Generations. All the way back to the beginning. You haven't really made a name for yourself, as far as stopping us goes."

Frank's smile went hard. "Would you like me to?"

Sister Theresa took the pen back from Jim. "You'll train him?" she asked.

"Better than you would, darling," Sadie said.

"What will you do about his real family?"

"We _are_ his real family," Donna said, pushing forward to scoop Jim up in one arm so she could cuddle him under the shelter of her parasol. "As for those monsters who had him before, don't worry: We've taken care of them. No one is looking for him anymore."

"It would behoove you to join that movement," Dave said, "and stop looking for Jim yourselves. We were polite today; suffice to say, we would not extend the same courtesy twice."

"Fine," Father John snapped, face twisted in a scowl. "You get this brat. But there are more, and you can't step in for all of them."

"Why would we want to?" Frank said with a laugh, taking a swig from the flask he kept in his pocket. "This is the only one you tried to swindle from Sadie's friends. Your mistake was getting close enough for me to remember you exist. Don't make it a habit."

The Church members left. Jim continued to cling to Donna even when they all went out to lunch to celebrate. Once she finally got him to relax enough to sit in his own seat with Kit curled up in his lap, he finally took the opportunity to look at the Doyles. Or, well.

To _Look_ at them.

They glowed in his Other vision, so much a part of the light that they seemed to be prisms for it. Their lights intermingled in a way Jim hadn't seen before, catching and intensifying each other's power until they were like diamonds in the heart of a star. After a while, it made his head hurt, and he blinked hard to try and clear the after-image.

A hand touched his. He looked up to find Sadie smiling at him. "Don't worry, darling," she said warmly. "I'll teach you everything you need to know about magic. And Frank can teach you how to fight monsters. He's simply the best at it. Why, he could even start, perhaps, with how to disable a mummy. Oh, no, a demon! No, a Grinch! Oh no, a calaca! No no, a _clown!_ No a ghost! A _chupacabra!_ "

"Sadie love," Frank said, leaning over to press his shoulder to hers, "take a breath." She did. "Take a drink." She did, this time with visibly more relish. "Now, let's not overwhelm the poor fellow. What's say we start at the beginning: With whatever ridiculous nightmare creature makes its way to our door tomorrow."

"Oh, Frank! What a simply excellent idea." They clinked their glasses in a bell-tone chime before finishing both drinking in synchronized, single swallows. "Bar tender!" they cried. "Another!"


	2. The Apprentice

...sssssooooooo.

I got nothing. I'm just a huge loser. Thanks be to NaNoWriMo for giving me the opportunity to flake on my original work by writing this instead! The procrastination from my procrastination is my friend.

Or.

...Yeah.

Next up: The Bones chapter! Which shouldn't be this long. But then THIS wasn't supposed to be this long. Someday I'll learn how to shut up.

But it is not this day.

 **11/27/16 UPDATE** Edited the last of the Spock part to make leaving Sarek's fault. I wanted Spock to make a miscalculation but it didn't work, he ended up just being kind of stupid? General grammar tweaks as well.

* * *

The Apprentice

* * *

Spock sat staring at the apple for a long, incredulous moment. Instinct flooded in before logic: he ran for cover. Well.

Hopped.

Once he was safe under the buffet table, he settled his…feet…, shut his eyes, and attempted to center himself through the discipline of meditation.

Surely there had been a hallucinogenic added to the apple. His mother had warned him about the propensity for unscrupulous humans to drug unwatched drinks. Perhaps that extended to fruit as well.

The apple came from the lunch his mother had packed for him though. When would the perpetrator have had the time, or opportunity, to switch it for a tainted lookalike?

A door at the far end of the banquet hall opened. Spock held his breath, hoping to avoid detection while in his compromised state.

"Aw, nuts," an adolescent male voice complained. "Nobody's even in here yet."

"I told you," a female voice, somehow smaller than the male's, replied with derision. "Dinner isn't scheduled until 6. People won't start showing up until 5:15, minimum. We need to keep looking."

"Yeah but that's— Hey, is that an apple?"

Spock shuffled back, further under the table. Large feet approached the apple, followed by an even larger body crouching by it. The being made no attempt to touch the apple.

"Huh," the male voice continued. "Poison, I see, hath been his timeless—"

"Not that _again_ ," the female interrupted. "So it's a poison apple. So what? Nobody's around, which means nobody ate it, which means it's not our problem."

The figure stood, tapping the toe of one sneaker against the apple so it would roll, revealing the bite mark Spock had left.

Four small black paws trotted up to the apple, accompanied by the female voice sighing. " _Fine,"_ she grumbled. "Let's find the victim and get this over with." The voice belonged to a cat, who dropped her nose to the ground to snuffle over the apple and then down along Spock's path. "I still think this isn't our job though," she said under her breath.

Or rather, she _seemed_ to say, as a result of the drugged apple. Because Terran felines lacked the ability to talk. They had neither the physiological nor, specifically, neurological capabilities.

The cat found him, poking her small pink nose under the tablecloth obscuring Spock's location before shaking her head to push all the way under. Her eyes zeroed in on him. "Guess," she called back to her companion.

"Not a tough one. Frog, for sure. This is a pretty basic spell."

The cat crawled under the table to sit, tail curled around her forepaws, and look down at him. "Not very brave," she sniffed, "are you? You get turned into a frog and the first thing you do is hide away?"

"That's not fair," the male said with reproach. "When's the last time _you_ got turned into a small prey animal?"

"Never," she quipped back. "I'm too smart for it."

The male knelt, bending forward so he could lift the edge of the tablecloth and peek under. He smiled, eyes warm and mismatched, one blue like the sky at morning, one dark as the sea with only four pinholes of the sky spaced in an orderly pattern.

But of course, eyes were not blue like natural phenomena. And ocular defects were not patterns. Vulcans did not think in such terms, so neither did Spock.

"I'm Jim," the boy said, nodding toward the cat. "Her Highness over there is Kit. We weren't here to help you initially, but we can probably add that as a side-quest." He shifted to stretch one hand out toward Spock. "Hop on. I'll give you a lift."

The cat snickered.

"I will not fit," Spock told the boy—Jim. "While this hallucination is quite...pervasive, nevertheless, I am aware that my body as it truly is could never rest in a child's hand."

Jim rolled his eyes. "That's a pretty fancy way of having a freakout," he said. "Also, I'm not a child, I'm thirteen. You talk like you're about forty."

"Negative. I am fifteen."

"Well, then, we're contemporaries." Jim curled his fingers in and out in a beckoning gesture. "Come on, I'll help you out."

"As I have stated, I will not fit—"

"Pretend I'm part of the hallucination."

Spock considered the logic of that.

"Alternatively," the cat said, "I could swat you on the behind and your instincts will have you hopping onto his hand. Your choice."

Spock got onto Jim's hand. Then Jim stood, raising Spock up and up and up from the floor, resettling him in the cup of both palms once they were straight.

"I don't need you to believe me that this is real," Jim said, eyes level with Spock's so, presumably, they could communicate as equals. "It'd make things easier if you could pretend, though."

"I am Vulcan. Vulcans do not pretend. What is, is."

"What is," Jim said, bending to pick the apple up by its stem and deposit it in a pocket of his overlarge leather jacket, "is that you're a frog because magic enchanted apple, but you don't exactly seem keen on accepting that. I figure pretending is a safe medium until we finish our chores and get the spell broken." He blinked, then grinned down at the cat. "Heh. Medium. Get it?"

"I'll scratch you," the cat warned, tail lashing.

Spock settled his…flippers?...more comfortably on Jim's palm and thought the issue through.

If he were, in fact, somehow a frog, what would he expect? To be smaller than Jim, small enough to fit in his hands, which he was. For his senses to be collecting different information, or expected information in different ways. Also true. For new instincts, frog instincts, to hum under the unrelenting hold of his control. True.

Still true: he could imagine all those things, to some degree of success or another, which meant he could hallucinate them.

How could he falsify it?

Vulcans were touch telepaths. If he were hallucinating Jim, being in Jim's hands, he would be able to reach out for Jim's mind and find nothing there. If he were actually in Jim's hands, traces of the Terran's emotions should leak in through all the places—nearly all of Spock's frog body—they were touching.

Spock closed his eyes, focusing inward to ready himself before reaching out.

Jim's emotions sang through the bottom of his flippers and his round belly where they rested in Jim's palms, patience and amusement and a solid, steady resolve. He was partially distracted, thinking about a pair of tasks he had to accomplish on top of breaking the spell on Spock. The thoughts seemed disordered, at first glance, but there was a fascinating thread of cohesion despite the disorder. His plans fluctuated moment to moment, weighing the odds of where the person he was looking for might be against where he thought the object he'd been sent for must be, now also factoring in how to find the caster of Spock's spell.

Spock was under a spell. He'd bitten into an enchanted apple and been turned into a frog.

Magic was real.

Spock opened his eyes, shifting so he could look down at Kit sitting by Jim's ankles. "Fascinating," he said. "A speech-capable feline."

Kit bristled, tail puffing up like an electric charge had shot through her. "See?" she growled. "This is why I don't talk around strangers. This right here. That's what they _always_ say."

"Well, technically what they say is—" Jim affected a mix of shock and horror, one thumb petting absently over Spock's head, "—'A _talking cat?',_ so you'll admit it was a bit different this time."

"How did you know the apple was enchanted?" Spock asked Jim, ignoring the irrelevant debate.

Jim lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "Man, you work with enough witches, some stuff rubs off, y'know?"

Spock, in fact, did not know.

"Where'd you find it, anyway?" Jim asked, focusing down at Spock with his mismatched eyes. "If we can track it back to where you found it, or who gave it to you, this could end up being really easy."

"It was in my lunch," Spock explained, "packed for me by my mother."

"I don't suppose your mother's a witch?" Kit wondered hopefully.

" _Are_ there Vulcan witches?" Jim added.

"Not to my knowledge," Spock said. "Though, at this juncture, I do not feel confident enough to reject the notion wholesale. It would seem unlikely. Regardless, my mother is not a Vulcan, though I cannot speak to her…witchiness. More to the point, I do not think she would enchant me without prior warning and consent."

Jim made a long, considering _eh_ noise _,_ head tilting side to side in what might be disagreement. "I mean. Sometimes adults do things for weird reasons? One of my guardians, Donna, she once had a friend put a spell on me so anything Other I touched zapped me so I'd learn to pay attention and stop, like, accidentally exorcising people's friends and relations and stuff. Took me a while to figure out, but taught me better control, which broke the spell. So if she is a witch, maybe this is a lesson?"

After a moment spent considering several lines of questions, Spock settled on, "It is not done so on Vulcan, and she has committed to raising me in the Vulcan manner. I do not think it could be her."

"You'd know best," Jim acknowledged, beginning to walk toward one of the doors leading out of the dining room with Spock in his hands and Kit trailing along beside him. "So who else could it be? Did you set your lunchbox down anywhere? Could someone have gotten to it?"

"Security is fairly tight around my family," Spock admitted.

Once Jim pushed through the door to the convention hall beyond, he switched his hold, tucking Spock into the bend of his left elbow, presumably to make him less conspicuous. "Security, huh? Are you some kind of big shot?"

"My father is the Vulcan ambassador to Earth. He is here for a meeting. Mother insisted we accompany him, wishing to see New York again as she has not visited in a number of years. We came across this convention by accident. She was fascinated by the concept and insisted I attend with her."

Jim hummed low in his chest, a noise that vibrated through Spock quite distractingly. "That's really suspicious," Jim said with a cheerful smile as he navigated their way through the crowds of convention attendees.

"Why would you think so?"

"Well, first, this isn't a convention. It's a fair. It not a ticketed event; it's ongoing. Always here, in some form or another. And nobody _comes across_ this place, Spock. You've got to know it's here because someone in the community brought you. Your mom might not be a witch, but she's _something,_ if she's been here enough to bring a guest. What did you say her name was?"

"I didn't," Spock reminded him. "She is Amanda Grayson."

"Hmm." Jim glanced down at Kit, who shook her head subtly. "Never heard of her," he admitted. "But that doesn't mean she's not a big deal. Some of the biggest deals are pretty unknown."

"…That does not make sense."

Jim shrugged. "Eh."

They made it to a hallway blocked off by a velvet rope. Jim ducked under it without pause, without so much as glancing around to make sure they wouldn't be caught or reported. Kit ran ahead of him, tail lashing with what looked like excitement.

"Where are we going, Jim?" Spock asked quietly.

"To collect auction winnings for my mentors," Jim said: not a satisfying explanation. "Then to try and find either your mom or a person I came here to find, whoever comes first."

"My mother said she was attending a panel on the xenobiological impact of cross-cultural contaminants."

Jim paused, then squinted down at Spock. "What kind of a convention did she tell you this was? Also, are you _sure_ she didn't enchant the apple, 'cause that sounds kind of like a hint, in retrospect."

Spock considered for another moment. "Fairly sure," he said. "I cannot imagine what would prompt her to trick me into learning a lesson, as you described your guardians doing for you. I am Vulcan; she would have simply offered me the correction."

"Sure she would," Jim hummed, starting back down the hall.

At the end, heavy black curtains covered an ordinary doorway. Jim shouldered his way through. Spock's frog eyes adjusted well to the darkness. While Jim greeted the proprietor of the…room, Spock resettled in his hold to get a better look around.

The entire room was covered floor to ceiling, corner to corner in enormous, sturdy shelves packed tight with things Spock had never seen before and could not deduce the use of. Toward the back, a high counter stood littered with odds and ends. Its base was made of three rows of dimly lit glass cases boasting hundreds of strange artifacts. Two round tables were spaced evenly in the remaining space, each with four chairs, also cluttered with yet more items.

Kit sat by the shelves that made up the far eastern wall, looking up with singular concentration. After a second, her haunches wiggled, and she leapt straight up. She landed daintily among the assortment, weaving her way through them.

"If she knocks something down again," the proprietor began warningly.

Jim held up his free hand in a sign of harmlessness. "She knows better," he promised.

The proprietor, a human of such strict neutrality—average brown hair, skin, eyes, average height, average weight—Spock could barely imagine them between blinks, frowned. "She knew better last time too," they muttered, turning away from Jim to step behind the counter and rummage around. "I've got the Doyles' winnings right here. You'd better sign right for it or I'll come find you!"

"Won't," Jim teased while signing the proffered sheet.

The proprietor lifted one hand to waggle a scolding finger at Jim. "I'll hire one of those critters you hate, the whatddoyoucallems, and sic 'em on you, see if I don't!"

"I don't hate them," Jim said, reaching across the counter to accept the wrapped package the proprietor handed him. "I just prefer them dead to alive."

"You're being very rude," they said, shaking a finger at Jim. They used that finger to indicate Spock tucked safely in the crook of Jim's left elbow. "Aren't you going to introduce us?"

Jim laughed brightly. "And give you a new being to torment with your incessant soul-snatching and twice-weekly newsletters? Not on your life."

The proprietor pouted. "You like my newsletters."

"Because you don't want my soul," Jim agreed.

They shivered pointedly. "Not on your life. Now, we've settled with the Doyle account." They leaned against the counter with what was probably supposed to be an alluring wiggle of their eyebrows. "Is it time to finally set up an account for you?"

"This has been fun," Jim said, not looking at the proprietor as he tucked the package into the messenger bag slung across his shoulders. "But since there's nothing you can do for me—"

"Perhaps," Spock suggested, resettling his front flippers on Jim's forearm, "this individual might know—" Jim's hand closed gently over Spock's entire head to quiet him. His Terran emotions flooded through Spock, complex layers of confidence and bravado under a swell of new panic flavored with desperation. Underpinning all that was the unexpected quiet of an apex predator, still and waiting. Watching.

Hungry.

"See you next time!" Jim chirped, turning on his heel to walk calmly but firmly out the door, Kit trotting beside him with her tail raised like a flag. "Never ask that one a question you want answered," the Terran whispered to Spock once they were nearly halfway down the hall. "Not them or anything like them. The question is a contract, and the answer is acceptance. They'll answer at any cost, which is what you'll owe them in kind. We can figure out how to break your spell on our own."

"What was that creature?" Spock asked, unsettled and frustrated by it. Tendrils of his own emotions frizzled and slipped through his control, resisting a lifetime of training to slither free.

A side-effect of the enchantment? Of Jim's unfettered feelings? Of whatever it was he'd just met and been saved from?

"Naming things gives them power," Jim said, sliding around the stanchions at the end of the hallway to rejoin the crowds in the main hall. "Now, next steps: We should find your mom."

"To what end?" Spock asked, tone calm for all the irritability trying to seep through.

"It's not like we have any other leads," Kit muttered from below him. Her tail began lashing, periodically swinging over to knock against Jim's leg as he walked. "If she really didn't enchant the apple—"

"She did not."

"—she still might have seen who did. Or she might know where the apple came from, who gave it to her."

"She undoubtedly used the replicator in our quarters at the hotel."

Kit turned her head up to shoot him a remarkably human sneer. "Then she's the one who enchanted it. Or you were dumb enough to let your food out of your sight and deserve being a frog."

"Rude," Jim sang under his breath. He jostled Spock gently. "Fess up, where's your mom?"

"Fess?"

"Confess!" Kit yowled, drawing the second syllable out considerably longer than was necessary.

"I cannot see that I should need to _confess—"_

"Slang," Jim said, jostling Spock again. "Do you know where she is?"

Spock resettled his flippers. "As I mentioned earlier, she told me she was attending a panel on the xenobiological impact of cross-cultural contaminants. The panel, which cannot be real given this is not actually a conference, should have run until dinner. Therefore, I have no solid idea of where she must be at this time."

Jim peered down at Spock. "So where were you all morning, if not with your mom?"

Spock thought of the long hours he'd spent listening to his mother chatter about how much fun the conference would be. All the time on the ship over, and weeks before that on Vulcan, her excitement bubbling around her like a haze. She wanted so badly to spend the time with him, to _bond_ , as she called it. That desire hummed through her with such strength it began to spill over onto Spock whenever they were close, touching him through their familial bond, reminding him again of how weak his shields were. His father felt nothing, even as Spock's head ached with his mother's joy. A true Vulcan would feel nothing.

The night before the conference, Spock told his mother he would not go with her. The conference was a waste of time. Spock had no need of _bonding;_ he would use the time and quiet away from her to practice his mental discipline.

Amanda's joy finally hushed.

In the morning, Spock found her gone. She'd left a boxed lunch for him with her schedule affixed to the front. No reason in wasting it, the note explained. Spock's ability to focus on meditation splintered. Human guilt nagged at him.

So he decided to give her the day. Surely a single day wouldn't matter in the long stretch of his life. Satisfied at their "bonding", she would attend the rest of the conference herself, leaving him to his studies. Spock took the lunch, and looked for her, and ate her food when he got hungry. And turned into a frog.

And met Jim.

None of which Jim needed to know.

"I explored the grounds for some time before deciding to rejoin my mother," he said. "Before I found her, I ate the apple."

"And here we are," Kit muttered.

"Well, it's not an infinite fair," Jim said, "luckily. We'll find her if we look in the right places. It's just a matter of figuring out where those are. And, hey, maybe we'll find the person I'm looking for first, and they can point us in the right directions."

"Who are you looking for?" Spock asked.

"Mustn't ask us," Kit hissed in a gravelly voice. "Not its business."

Jim toed Kit in the side. "No obscure literature references with the alien, it's not polite."

"Tolkien is not obscure," Spock said before he could stop himself.

Kit and Jim both looked at him in surprise, though Jim's expression melted quickly to amusement. "Pardon my assumptions," the Terran said with a grin. "Anyway, let's get started."

They began with what Spock assumed were the usual places: a café, a little atrium filled with light and roses and hanging vines, a bustling market tucked under and behind an unused staircase. After that, their search got…bizarre. Jim took him to a room filled with animated skeletons all mingling at little tables.

"Oops," he muttered, closing the door quickly. "Didn't know they were doing a speed dating thing, should have avoided that. Sorry, I know it's a weird way of meeting people, but the skeletons seem to really dig it."

"Buh-dum, _tssssh,"_ Kit said.

"It wasn't a joke," Jim told her petulantly. "Spock might be scarred forever, speed dating is the _worst."_

Speed dating wasn't the part of that room Spock found exceptional, which Jim didn't seem to notice. What kind of a world _was_ this?

A world, apparently, that had a room-sized tank of mermaids and other humanoid water creatures arguing animatedly over blobs of sagging, unfired clay sculptures. A world of magic potions lined up for sale by a man being harassed for his permits by a security officer who filled out her uniform but was also otherwise invisible.

A world of nightmare creatures who sometimes looked at Jim like he was their worst fear brought to life.

"All right," Jim said eventually, "I know you feel pretty confident that your mom isn't one, but if we don't find her in the witches' lounge then our next stop is the second floor, and I would really rather not take you there as a frog. There's some weird people up there."

Weird people _up there?_ What were the people _down here?_

"At this point," Spock said, "I have no confidence at all about what my mother might or might not be. She knew what this place was and gave me no warning. Worse, she lied about it. Perhaps she is a witch, and this is a lesson, and I'll never learn it until I find her and ask what her intentions were. I believe she may have been angry with me; she may have done this as—"

Jim slid Spock down his forearm until he could hold him in both hands, lifting him so they were on eye level. "I don't really know you," he said, "and I don't know your mom at all. But I can tell about people, sometimes, if I look at them just right. I've been looking at you all day, Spock. You aren't the son of a petty mother. You aren't here like this with the touch of vengeance on you. I still think there's a lesson, but I think it's a fun one. I think you'll like it. Your mom will know for sure, though." He tucked Spock back into the crook of his elbow. "Let's go find her."

Spock settled as best he could, warmed and confused, content to let Jim take him into the witches' lounge while he ordered his thoughts.

The door said _Occupied,_ looked like it belonged to a broom closet, and just barely muffled the sound of many voices. When Jim put his hand on the knob, it glowed red under his palm for a long moment. Spock looked up at Jim just in time to see light gleam over his left pupil like a reflection over glossy paint. The handle returned to its usual color.

Someone yanked the door open from the inside.

"Do you have any idea," the woman in front of them began angrily, "how much work went into the spell you just—"

Jim rummaged through his bag until he produced a slip of paper. "With my compliments," he said, handing it over.

The woman eyed it suspiciously, then did the same to Jim, then sighed mightily. "Oh, all right, come in. If you weren't so cute, I'd'v'e made you into stew years ago."

"Lies," Jim said, stepping into the room when the woman stepped back. "I'd make a much better pie."

"It's so true," the woman said wistfully. She shut the door, stuck Jim's paper to it, and wandered away.

"Who," Spock began.

"Not important," Kit chirped up at him.

Spock meant to argue (why did they keep _not telling him things?)_ , but at that moment, his eyes adjusted to the dim lighting. The room looked like a bar, with bottles of alcohol lining the far wall and a few tables scattered throughout. Groups of two or three low, plush chairs clustered in each of the four corners. People of all description sat alone or in groups, chatting or sketching together or laughing, arguing or raising their glasses for a toast, their voices a low, constant hum of human emotion.

His mother sat at the bar. She had a drink in her hand that someone had put a small umbrella into. A woman sat on her right; a creature of some nature on her left. They were all laughing. At that moment, for no reason Spock could determine, Amanda sat up, expression warming with anticipation as her companions left her. Her eyes swept over the room before settling, not on Jim, but on Spock. Her mouth lifted in a smile. "Hello, Spock," she said, clear in his ears despite her distance.

"Oh man," Jim said above him. "Is that your mom? I think we've been looking for the same person!" He crossed the room to hold Spock out for her. "I don't think he was a frog for long before I found him, but this could have ended really badly. Which, I mean, you must have known."

Amanda gathered Spock into her hands gently, smiling at him for a long, quiet moment. "Did you have fun?" she asked.

Spock opened his mouth, then closed it again, considering the question. "My world is larger than it was," he said at last, "and I am…curious. I would have liked exploring it with you."

His mother's thumb stroked over his head. "We have all weekend, still, if you like."

"I would find that very satisfying." Spock tilted his head thoughtfully. "Could Jim accompany us, if he would like to? And Kit as well."

Amanda laughed, bright and warm, running a thumb down his back. "Oh, Spock. You always did excel at your lessons." She leaned down to kiss his head, and the world righted itself around him.

"Whoa," Jim breathed.

"He's _hot,"_ Kit agreed approvingly.

Spock looked back, looked _down,_ and met Jim's mismatched gaze. "Hello," he said. "I am Spock."

Jim's grin split his face. "Nice to meet you again."

"Allow me to present my mother," Spock continued, stepping aside to let them shake hands in the Terran fashion. "Amanda Grayson."

"A pleasure," Jim said, taking her hand firmly. "I've actually heard a lot about you, not just from you son, who is a genuine delight."

Spock felt one of his eyebrow lift in curiosity.

"I know," Amanda said with a mysterious swirl of her beverage. "I've been waiting for you, Jim. And you," she added, setting her glass aside to bend and scratch under Kit's chin. "You're a fine, strong girl, Kit. What you're worried about won't come to pass. You'll be okay."

Kit's tail lashed as she butted hard into Amanda's palm, leaping into her arms when his mother opened them.

"Me next," Jim said, smile friendly and unassuming. Spock felt a moment of longing for when he'd been a frog in Jim's hands, able to sense deeper than the show Jim put on for those around him.

Illogical.

Amanda laughed softly as she straightened, Kit still cuddled to her chest. "Spock next," she said, turning to him. "Go on, my son: Ask."

For a moment, Spock struggled to form the correct words. He finally settled on, "There is something to this conversation I am not privy to."

Jim looked startled. "He doesn't _know?"_

Spock turned to his mother expectantly, arms tucked behind his back, eyebrow lifted in challenge. "Know?" he echoed.

"Think about it," Amanda offered. "Without any lens of disbelief, based only on your observations. What have you seen? What have you heard?"

"You are known here," Spock began immediately. "Your standing is good enough that you secured entrance for me, despite my ignorance of this whole sphere of existence. You are in a place reserved for witches, to go by the name, or perhaps simply magic users more generally, or of a specific type. You enchanted an apple that turned me into a _frog,_ Mother."

She stifled a giggle in the scruff of Kit's neck. "Only for a little while, my son," she replied. "And in service to a very good cause."

Jim touched his elbow to Spock's side in what appeared to be encouragement. "Keep going, this is the best. You're like a detective."

Spock suppressed an unexpected and inappropriate urge to preen under even so slight a compliment. "It would seem logical to conclude you are either a witch, specifically, or some other type of magic user."

"Getting warm," Kit said. Amanda resumed scratching under her chin to encourage purring rather than commentary.

"There are details," Spock continued, "I am…unsure of. I do not understand their significance, although I am certain they are vital."

"Tell me," Amanda prompted. "I'll help you understand."

Spock indicated Jim with a small motion before resettling his hands at the small of his back. "Jim said when we first met that he was looking for someone, and just now he indicated that person is _you._ He would not need you specifically above any other witch unless you had something specific you could do for him. He would ask it of you when he would not of the creature in the shop at the end of the hall."

Amanda's smile froze, her hand on Kit's back curling in to grip her fur. Slowly, with a sense of deep, building malice, she turned to face the Terran teenager.

Jim's hands were already up defensively. "It was fine! I didn't let him ask any questions or get any names or _give any_ so it's fine. We only went there because I had to pick up something for the Doyles, and, to be fair, I had to do that before I found frog Spock. Frock. Spog? Anyway, that errand is the only reason I even got to come here today, so, I mean, I feel strongly you should have known better if you didn't want him to go with me."

"There are some things even I can't see," Amanda protested. "He's so _new._ You should have known better!"

"We did know better," Kit said, shaking Amanda's hand off so she could leap delicately onto Jim's shoulders. He adjusted to her weight thoughtlessly, gaze calm and level and dark on Amanda's. "Why do you think we took such good care of him? _You_ should have known better, leaving him defenseless in a place like this. What if we hadn't gotten there first?"

Amanda sighed heavily through her nose, reaching back to grab her umbrella drink. "You do get there first," she said with certainty. "Always."

"That is another piece I do not quite know how to interpret," Spock interrupted, unwilling to let them argue around him any longer. He tilted his head when they all turned to him. "You spoke to Kit of comfort in the future tense. You continue to reference _knowing,_ as though you were aware events would unfold in this manner. But, Mother, clairvoyance—" He hesitated, trying to hold to her request that he view the situation without the lens of disbelief. If he could spend the day as a frog, why could his mother not—

Could she—

"Why did you marry Father?" he blurted, shaken by his own question, by his desperation to understand her. "Even I am aware of how you suffer at times under Vulcan society, how they treat you, even to your face. Who knows that better than I? They tell me of what a disadvantage your blood is in mine. If you are— If you could _see_ — Why—?"

"My son." Amanda reached out to cup his cheek in one palm, sending the warmth of her love and contentment shivering through him, calming the riot of his thoughts. "I married your father because I loved him, as I knew I would before I even met him. I saw hardship and pain, yes, but I also saw you. This. Every day we are together. I saw Sarek in our quiet moments, cherishing me despite himself, with all the strength of Vulcan love. I do see, Spock, this future and others. It has never stopped me living my life, or loving my family, or being truly happy."

Spock blew out a long, trembling breath, re-centering his world to accept its new dimensions. "And Father?" he asked. "Have you told Sarek?"

"If I had told you of this yesterday, would you have believed me? Without your own experience, how could you possibly?" His mother shook her head. "I could never tell Sarek, and he will never need to know. Even if I brought him here, he would not see. Would not _believe._ And I do not need him to, Spock. I love him as he is. Be content, my dear. We will live with your father and have this for ourselves. All is well."

"And you, Jim?" Spock asked, turning to him so suddenly the Terran blinked, hand raised to stroke one of Kit's delicate ears. "What would you ask of my mother?"

Jim's mismatched eyes studied Spock, searching him for something, before sliding over to Amanda. "I'm not a seer," he said, casual in the face of Spock's entire reality shifting under his feet.

"Are you sure?" Amanda asked, friendly warmth in her tone but not quite matched by her expression. She lifted a hand toward Jim's darker eye, dropping it when he leaned away.

"Better not," he said firmly. "And yes, I am. I don't see. Not the future, anyway. But, recently, there have been…"

"Dreams," Kit murmured when Jim faltered, butting her head against his. "He has nightmares now."

"Just one," Jim said. "I think it's—she's…" He gestured to the same eye Amanda reached for. "It feels like a calling. Like hunger. Familiar. There's something I'm supposed to do, I think. But I don't…" He shook his head. "It'd have to be awful, to reach me this way. I don't—" He struggled for a moment before blowing out a sigh. "I don't _want to._ Is it— Do I have to?"

Jim sounded, in that last moment, nothing like the confident, brash guide to the unknown Spock had traveled with that day. He sounded…young. Lost. Desperate for comfort he wasn't sure would come. Spock found himself shifting closer to him without meaning to and made himself stop short of touching Jim's arm.

Amanda did not. She wrapped Jim in a hug, jostling Kit on her perch, and pressed her cheek to his. "Oh, Jim," she murmured. "You're right, and wrong, and worrying too much. You'll know better soon enough. Try not to think of the calling, if you can. Dwelling won't help."

"So I will," Jim said, voice shaking, arms tight around Amanda. "I will have to go."

"You won't have to," she soothed. Jim slumped in her arms, utterly relieved. Spock, beside them, frowned.

Not _having_ to go didn't mean not going _at all._ It indicated a lack of reluctance, but not an end to the journey itself.

Spock looked up to find Kit watching him, eyes solemn. So she, too, noticed. Perhaps she would bring it up with Jim later.

They both switched their attention to Jim when he straightened from Amanda's hold, scrubbing a hand over his right eye, relief gathering in his smile like dew on a desert blossom.

…Perhaps not. Surely Kit would be reluctant to spoil Jim's newfound mental peace, especially over something Amanda indicated was inevitable. Perhaps they would form a conspiracy of kindness to keep Jim focused on the world around him rather than whatever dream it was that haunted him.

Perhaps Spock could do his part starting now.

"Mother," he said, perfecting his posture as he turned to her. Her eyes shone with mirth, causing Spock to wonder if she already knew what his question would be, already knew what Jim's response would be, already saw the night spiraling out before them.

But Jim wasn't a seer. Jim didn't know.

So Spock said, "It is late, and I, at least, have not eaten since the bite of apple earlier today. Jim and Kit I cannot speak for, though they never ate in my presence. Perhaps we might take our evening meal together. I do think Jim and Kit deserve some small thanks for showing me the fair and bringing me to you."

"No need to thank us," Jim insisted.

Kit bit his ear. "Speak for yourself!" she said over Jim's yelp.

"It would not only be for gratitude," Spock insisted, feeling his heart rate increase inexplicably when Jim's two-toned blue eyes turned to him. "I would also— I have heard," he tried again, "that among Terrans, shared meals are a way of…solidifying friendship."

Jim beamed. "Dinner sounds great," he said just as his stomach made a most alarming growling noise. He blushed, pressing a hand to it. "Sorry. Guess I'm hungrier than I realized!"

"As it happens," Amanda said, beginning to herd them back toward the door, "I already made reservations. You're going to love the salmon," she told Kit.

"That's never going to get old," Jim laughed, holding the door open for their party when they reached it.

"No," Amanda agreed, smiling when Jim grinned at her. She led them outside the fair, back into New York proper, looking the same as it had that morning before Spock knew anything about the creatures hidden there. He wondered who else around him knew about his mother's world—Jim's world, complete with talking cat. What else went on beyond or beneath his notice?

They reached the restaurant without issue and were admitted despite the cat on Jim's shoulder. People inclined their heads to Amanda, occasionally either waving at or flinching away from Jim, whose smile never wavered.

"Why do they do that?" Spock asked as he slid into the chair next to Jim's.

"Do what?"

"Faker," Amanda said, unfolding her menu to peer over it at them.

Jim wrinkled his nose at her. "The ones who wave are friends," he explained to Spock. "The ones who don't, uh. Well, they know me. Of me." His eyes cut away. "I've got something of a reputation. Wild childhood."

Spock considered him, thinking of the data he'd collected about Jim throughout the day. "Is it your eye?" he asked, cataloging Jim's clenched jaw as another data point. "There's something about it. Something…"

"Other," Kit murmured, slinking down from Jim's shoulder to drink from his water glass.

"Other?" Spock echoed.

"It's nothing," Jim said. He glanced toward Amanda's watchful presence. "Nothing important. Not right now," he insisted. "It might never come up at all!"

"You see something, don't you," Spock pressed. "Is that what you call what you see? _Other?"_

"I think I'll order a cheeseburger," Jim replied, opening his menu pointedly. Amanda ducked behind hers, perhaps to hide her reaction. Kit gave him a meaningful feline look and sauntered around the edge of Amanda's barrier to settle in her lap.

Or to give Spock an opening. He leaned in close to Jim's ear, clustered together over his menu as though discussing it contents. "If my mother is a seer," he murmured low where only Jim would hear him, "which you claim not to be, what _are_ you, Jim?"

"It doesn't matter," Jim said, matching his tone and body language until their foreheads were nearly pressed together. Attempting to force Spock to withdraw?

Illogical.

"It matters to me," Spock said. He tiled his head so their hair brushed together, finding irrational triumph in the visible shiver it sent down Jim's spine. "You spent the better portion of your day engendering curiosity in me. I think it only right you satisfy it."

"You win," Jim announced, sitting back with blood flushed high in his cheeks. "I'm still not telling you. Anyway, what does it matter? You'll be gone by Monday." Something wistful filled Jim's words at the last phrase.

That, at least, Spock could untangle. "Why should I be gone?" he asked, opening his own menu at last.

Jim's expression clouded with uncertainty. "You…said your mom brought you here for a conference? Those usually only last the weekend."

"I said my mother asked me to attend a conference with her while on planet for my father's business," Spock corrected. "Our business with the fair might take only a weekend; my father's work is indefinite."

Jim appeared to struggle for a long moment, searching Spock's face for a hint of misdirection. Spock laid his curiosity bare and waited. "Could be dangerous," the Terran said at last. "Hanging around me, I mean. Could be bad for your health."

"Could be an adventure," Kit chirped from Amanda's lap.

"Could be a beginning," Amanda added.

Jim's eyes flicked to what he could see of her over the menu then back to Spock, uncertainly warring with blossoming interest. "Could be a lot of things," he murmured.

"Perhaps even all of them," Spock agreed. "Still, I would know your world better. Would know _you_ better. Other than my parents, I know no one else in the city. It could, indeed, be a most fortune meeting."

"You were a _frog_ ," Jim protested.

Spock shrugged. "I did not suffer for it. And more, being a frog did not impair my mental abilities. While a frog, I was still a scientist. There is much I might learn here."

Jim took a deep breath; released it, and his tension, in a sigh. "I could show you around," he offered with a crooked smile. "I still have my errands I have to run, but the Doyles won't mind. Maybe I could pick you up on Monday?"

"Excellent," came the dueled-toned, conspiratorial whisper from behind Amanda's menu.

Spock ignored them. "Monday," he agreed.

Their waiter came, and they ordered. After lunch, they went their separate ways, Spock and his mother back to their hotel, Jim and Kit to…wherever it was they came from.

On Monday, the lobby called up to Spock to let him know he had a visitor.

The adventure began immediately.

* * *

Jim swung into Spock's room through the window.

"We are on the seventy-eighth floor," Spock protested, rushing to the window to grab Jim's elbow and pull him more swiftly inside. Jim hopped a little on one foot before regaining balance. Kit meowed at Spock from her spot on Jim's shoulder. "You are worse than he," the Vulcan told her. "Balancing on Jim! What if you fell?"

"Not likely," Jim said, brushing off his pants. "You living in a tall, tall tower is what fairytale magic is _made_ for."

Spock frowned, trying to make sense of that. "Elaborate."

"Nah." Jim grinned at him. "It'll ruin the fun." He shrugged off the backpack he was wearing.

"Is this fun in the same vein as the mummies?" Spock asked, holding his arms out so Kit could jump to a less twitchy perch.

"The mummies were awesome," she murmured, reaching her head up to butt under Spock's chin.

Jim knelt to begin digging through the bag. "Garbage, garbage, math homework—"

"That's due soon," Kit reminded him. "Like, tomorrow, I think."

"Eh." Jim tossed it aside. "You're gonna love this, Spock, we're gonna see some—"

"No," Spock said.

Jim sat back on his heels with a puzzled expression, wild blond hair flopping forward into his eyes. "No?" he wondered.

Spock set Kit down on his bed, then crossed over to Jim to pick up his math papers. He held them out to the Terran. "You must finish these first," he said.

"Aww, no," Jim whined, shying away from them. "But it's so _boring."_

"It is not boring." Spock gave the papers a shake in Jim's direction. "Math is the language of the universe. It is necessary to both your education in general and the expansion of your mind more specifically. I will not go on another monster hunt unless you can assure me all your studies have been completed."

"It's not a monster hunt this time," Jim wheedled. "So your ultimatum doesn't count. Right? I think that should be right."

Spock arched an eyebrow at him, then held his position, unmoving, until Jim sighed and snatched the papers out of his hand. "You may use the desk to complete your work. Do you have a writing implement or must I find one? I will admit, I had not expected your school to still assign paper homework."

"My teachers are old school," Jim grumbled, grabbing a pen from his bag before slouching over to the desk. "I don't think most of them have ever even seen a PADD, much less assigned homework on one."

Spock sat on the bed next to Kit, allowing her to climb into his lap for petting. "I do not understand."

"Jim's a genius," Kit purred, arching her back under his hand. "Plus he's got that eye, y'know? Not always safe for the normal kids. So he's got tutors. Really, really old tutors."

"…What kind of tutors?" Spock asked after struggling with his curiosity for a long minute.

Jim, absorbed in his math studies, did not answer.

"Mostly ghosts," Kit said in his stead. "The math teacher's a skeleton, though. I think she was around before calculus, sometimes she forgets stuff and Jim has to remind her."

Spock's eyebrows lifted in poorly contained surprise. "You are doing calculus?" he asked Jim. "But you are only thirteen. I thought Terran students waited until high school for more advanced math."

"Genius," Kit sang. "I don't think any of his studies have been regular kid level in, like, ever."

"There," Jim proclaimed, clicking the end of his pen to retract the tip. "Done." He turned to Speck, hefting the pages at him. "Can we go now? I think you'll like this!"

"That took much less time than I had thought it would," Spock said, "given the excess of your complaining."

"It was easy," Jim said. He crossed the room to stuff his math papers back into his bag. "You ready to go? Where are your shoes?"

Spock did not stand. "If it was so easy, why did you not complete it before coming?"

"Didn't want to," Jim explained, frustration building in his tone. "Can we _please_ go?"

"Why did you not wish to?" Spock asked.

Jim threw his hands in the air. "What does it matter! I didn't want to, then you made me, now it's done. Let's just go already!"

"He hasn't been sleeping well," Kit said with a flick of her tail. "It's made him cranky for days."

"Why is he not sleeping well?" Spock asked the cat. Jim protested loudly at being ignored, which had precisely no effect.

Kit looked up to meet Spock's eyes, surprising him, as she always did, with the depth of emotion he could see there. "It's those same dreams. Remember, he asked your mother about them at the fair?"

"Still?" Spock asked her, then lifted his eyes to meet Jim's scowl. "Are they the same?"

"I don't want to talk about it," he bit out.

"Why would you speak to my mother about them but not me?" Spock asked with a disapproving tilt of his head. "Kit knows, too. Am I alone unworthy?

Jim visibly struggled with his response for a long moment. Then he sighed, walked over to sit by Spock on the bed, and rubbed his forehead with one hand. "It's not that I think you aren't worthy," he said softly. "It's—No offence, but I don't know how you could help."

"I have read in Terran psychology papers," Spock replied, "that talking can be quite helpful in relieving stress. Also, perhaps having an outside opinion would alleviate enough of your anxiety on the topic to cause the dream to cease, even for a little while."

"I am not," Jim began, swelling slightly with offence. Kit swatted his thigh. He looked at her, deflated on another sigh, and nodded. "Yeah, okay, I guess I'm pretty anxious about it. But what's there to share? In the dream, I'm in darkness. I can hear someone screaming—lots of someones. I don't know who they are, or where, or how to find them or anything. They're crying. I want to—"

Jim shook his head sharply, hands twisted together, eyes locked on the digits squeezed pale in his lap. "In the dream," he whispered. "The me in the dream. I want to eat them. They sound terrified and lost, and it's delicious. I would eat them all. There's something else there, something just as hungry, but more excited. It knows where the people are. It caused them to suffer. The suffering is food on its own, but it's going to eat them. Thousands of them. They're all so lost and hungry, but not hungrier than the creature. I want to join it when I'm asleep. I want to stop it when I'm awake. But mostly, I want it to leave me alone.

"Anyway, it doesn't matter." Jim straightened out of his hunch, tossing his head as though that would help rid him of the emotions even now causing his hands to shake. "Your mom said I don't have to go, right? So I don't have to, so it's not important." He stood up. "Let's go."

For a long, quiet minute, Spock only looked at him. Then "We are going to meditate," he said, putting Kit aside to move more fully onto the bed and cross his legs. "Right now. We will go after you are settled."

"What?" Jim squawked while Kit padded her way up to the pillows to curl in among them. "No! I wanna show you the— _No_." He set his jaw. "I didn't tell you so you'd pity me."

Spock settled his hands on his knees. "Do you imagine I meditate daily to show myself pity?" he asked with as calm an expression as he could manage. "I meditate to focus, to gain perspective, to seek tranquility beyond the pull and push of emotion. Meditation is not pity. It is a practice in self-discipline and self-care. Come, Jim. I will be insistent if I must."

"You have to write a cultural exchange paper soon anyway," Kit added from her new throne. "I'm sure this could totally count. Assuming meditation is a Vulcan thing and not just, like, a Spock thing." She flicked one ear. "…Is it?"

"It is," Spock agreed, motioning Jim closer. "I will help you meditate this first time, and then I will explain it on our way to wherever it is you insist we go."

Jim sat reluctantly, pulling his limbs in to imitate Spock's. "Like this?" he asked, uncertainty in every line of his body.

Spock leaned forward to correct his posture. Catching the flavors of Jim's emotional state through direct contact with his skin was a fortunate coincidence. The sharpest thrum rising from the Terran was discomfort: he did not want to be where he was doing what they were doing. Jim felt restless. Unsettled. Underneath all that was the staticky buzz of deep, unyielding exhaustion. More than anything else, Jim needed rest.

Perfect.

"With me," Spock said, straightening into the proper form. He shut his eyes, trusting Jim to do the same, and began talking in low, soothing tones. For the next twenty-three and one-third minutes, Spock walked Jim through a traditional meditation used to center the brain for the purpose of sleep. At that point, Jim's gradually listing body finally succumbed to Spock's plan and slumped over. Spock opened his eyes, climbed carefully off the bed, and circled around the other side for better access to Jim. He gently rearranged the Terran out of his tangle, straightening his limbs while using his telepathy to eavesdrop for signs that Jim might be waking.

Once Jim was comfortable, Spock spread his sleep robe over him for warmth, and crossed over to his desk to sit and read until Jim woke.

"Sneaky," Kit commented, still ensconced in the pillows.

"As long as he is this tired, he will be in danger of causing harm to himself or us," Spock murmured in return, flicking through his PADD for an interesting option. "He does not consider consequences once his exhaustion beings to distract him."

"No complaints from me," Kit said with a yawn. "The thing he wants to show you is gonna keep on happening for the next three days; there's no rush. Plus, he brought us to your room via the _window._ I'd rather not make that a habit."

Spock set down his PADD. "How did he do that?" he asked. "I still cannot reason through the mechanics of it. Neither of you had any visible tools with you when you arrived."

Kit rested her head on her forepaws and shut her eyes. "Wake me when he gets up, okay?" She either fell asleep immediately or pretended to very effectively.

Very well.

Spock resumed his reading, and his waiting, and carried on his vigil alone.

…

Jim woke eventually, after which he complained for half an hour. Once he grumbled himself to a halt, he led Spock out the hotel (by way of the elevator and front doors), through the city, and to a hidden outcropping of rocks in the bay.

People gathered there, partly in the water, partly just outside it, grouped in what might be large families or clusters of friends, each naked in the pale light of morning just before dawn. Each also had a brown-speckled piece of gray cloth draped somewhere over their body, this one covering a leg, that a shoulder, many of them pulled around the shoulders. They were grooming each other in the way of many Terran mammals, fixing hair or dusting sand off brown skin.

They were also singing. Low, haunting songs Spock had never heard before, in a language he did not recognize. Their harmonies rose and fell like water lapping at the shore. Spock's first impulse upon seeing the twenty or so people had been to ask Jim about them. As soon as he registered the singing, though, he felt his breath go still in his lungs.

It was like nothing he had ever experienced before.

The sun crested over the horizon. Their song carried out into one last, lingering multi-toned note. Each person gathered their gray cloth and pulled it firmly around their shoulders. In a shift of flesh and reality, they turned into a group of seals, rolled into the water, and were gone.

"Selkies," Jim said after a few minutes of disbelieving silence. "Seal people. I'm sure you noticed they're human-shaped when they're not wearing their pelts and seal-shaped when they are. They don't usually all come up like this, but it's, like, I forget the word, they get together and sing every six or so months." He turned a spectacular grin on Spock. "Worth staying up all night for, huh?"

Spock, for a long time, had no words. "Selkies," he said at last, marveling.

"Regular people think they're a myth," Kit said from her spot curled in Jim's lap. "Irish or Scottish or, like, Icelandic or something. Really they're all over. Anywhere with seals has selkies."

Jim clapped Spock on the shoulder. "I'll send you a book," he said. He climbed to his feet and offered Spock a hand up.

Spock accepted, taking the opportunity to check on Jim's emotions, which seemed considerably more level, after the nap and the singing. "Please do," he said when Jim released his hand. "I would also be grateful if you would let me know how your nightmares develop. I could teach you more meditation."

"Sure thing," Jim said while rolling his eyes.

At first, Jim did. The dreams did not abate or grow less frightening. Within a few weeks, Jim's description of the dreams began tapering off only to disappear altogether. Nothing Spock said or did could convince Jim to continue sharing. Even Kit became totally mute on the subject, demonstrating just how concerning their situation really was. Spock resolved to try harder.

After all, Spock was Vulcan. And Vulcans had many other ways to fight the darkness in people's minds. He just had to convince Jim.

There had to be a way.

* * *

Spock tackled Jim to the ground just as a venomous spine shot through the space where his chest had been.

"Thanks," Jim wheezed under him, lifting one hand to pat his back. "Look," he called to the manticore sulking in the far corner of the abandoned barn, "do not make me get serious here. I want the silver spoon. Let us take it and we'll go."

"But it's mine," the manticore grumbled, voice ringing like music.

Spock pulled Jim to his feet. "Whining won't get you anywhere," Jim scolded, brushing off first his own and then Spock's clothes, knocking dirt and bits of hay back down to the general disorder of the floor. "And it's _very rude_ to try and kill us with poison spines, by the way."

"Venomous," Spock and the manticore corrected in unison.

The manticore's rounded lion's ears perked up. "You know they're venomous?"

"They would have to be," Spock said, picking a final piece of straw off the back of Jim's shirt, "since your attack requires no ingestion."

"You wanna talk about ingestion more?" it asked hopefully. "I haven't had breakfast, and you smell, man, let me tell you—"

"We're getting distracted," Jim interrupted, pressing a hand against Spock's chest to push him slightly behind Jim's smaller body. "Where is the spoon? It's important."

"But it's shiny," the manticore protested. "And it's _mine."_

"It's _not_ yours, do you have any idea what we've been through to— Hey!"

Spock ignored Jim's complaints to continue digging through the Terran's pockets. He produced the folded silver wrapper of a stick of gum Jim had been chewing the day before. "This, also, is shiny. Furthermore, it crinkles, which the spoon cannot do. Perhaps we might trade."

"It's pretty small," the manticore said, trying to sound skeptical despite the interested quirk of its whiskers.

Jim sighed heavily. "Okay. How about you let me and Spock go, and we'll come back with a _ton_ of cool shiny crinkly stuff, and you give us the spoon?"

"Maybe," the manticore hedged. Its scorpion tail curled and flexed in a mannerism that looked to Spock very like Kit's when she was curious.

"We will return within the hour," Spock said, hooking an arm through Jim's to tow him out of the building. They left the gum wrapper as a sign of good faith.

"Poltergeists," Jim muttered, beginning to count points off on his fingers, "ghouls, a mummy, werewolves and a ton of ghosts and some of those obnoxious high society people and that friggin' nosferatu. This is what stumps us. A _spoon._ It's been a _week_ since we started looking for it."

"In fairness," Spock said as they walked toward the taxi they'd paid heavily to wait for them, "the spoon isn't the issue."

Jim flailed his hands at Spock, then at the barn, then through the air in general. " _Manticore_!" he exclaimed. "Who knew, right?"

Spock got into the back of the cab while Jim was still frowning at the barn like his displeasure alone could make the manticore vanish. Jim could do many things Spock still didn't understand. Who knew? Perhaps disappearing cryptids was one of them. In case it was not, Spock leaned over to pop Jim's door open. "What will we give the manticore?" he asked. "More wrappers?"

"Nah," Jim said. He squinted at the barn for another long moment, hands on his hips, radiating disapproval, then sighed heavily. "We can do better for her than trash."

"Her?" Spock asked as Jim slid in beside him. "I thought the manticore must be either genderless or male, owing to the mane."

Jim hit a button below the soundproof glass that sequestered them from their driver. The driver, a gorgon who had sunglasses matching her own on each of the dozens of individual snakes making up her hair, flipped a switch on the dashboard without looking up from her PADD.

"Yeah," she said.

"We need to go to the shopping center on Main Street," Jim said. "We've got to do a little bit of buying, then come back here. Is that okay?"

"It's your fare," she said distractedly. She flipped the switch back off to mute them, wedged her PADD under one thigh, then turned the vehicle on and pulled out toward the dirt road that would lead them back to civilization.

Jim huffed a laugh and leaned back in his seat. "All manticores look the same, basically," he said to Spock, getting back to the initial question. "Body of a red lion, face of a man, scorpion tail. Some of them get fancy with bat wings, but that's not standard. They code male, but that doesn't mean they _are._ I suppose some of them must be non-binary or fluid, just based on how gender expression works, but that one's female."

"How could you tell? How might I tell, in the future, were I to meet one alone?"

"Don't do that," Jim protested strongly, turning to grab one of Spock's hands. Worry and determination sparked from their contact, running up Spock's arm like touching a livewire. "Not on your own, okay? Don't do it. Promise."

"Life being what it is," Spock said, watching Jim's expression sour, "I cannot make such a promise. I can say I will not actively seek one out."

"…Fine," Jim grumbled, folding his arms. "I'll take it. Anyway, I don't think you could tell on your own, unless you, like, asked, and I don't know what manticore gender etiquette is like. Asking might be polite, and it also might get you, y'know, killed and eaten."

"We would have been killed and eaten anyway," Spock pointed out, "if the creature hadn't spent most of its time cowering from you."

Jim winced faintly, turning his gaze out toward the scenery blurring by them. "It's all kind of related," he admitted grudgingly. "The manticore doesn't like me for the same reason I can tell she's female."

"Because you can see," Spock murmured, still watching him. "Because of _how_ you see. Your eye."

"The button," Jim agreed, soft and nonsensical as always, insistent that the dark and light of his left eye resembled a button without ever explaining why.

"Someday you will tell me," Spock swore.

"That'd end badly, I think," Jim said. He shook his head, affecting an easy smile that almost never failed to charm its target. Spock, while moved by it for reasons he couldn't quite pinpoint, was not actually dissuaded from his goal. "Anyway, back to the original topic, no, we're not gonna give her a bunch of gum wrappers. For one, I think it'd take a _lot._ Nobody wants that much gum. For another, she deserves better than our garbage. I have some ideas though."

"Such as?" Spock prompted, keeping his voice dry so Jim would know how little he cared for the needless ongoing dramatic pauses.

A grin pulled at Jim's mouth as their driver turned into the parking lot of an old shopping center. "You ever been in a pet store?"

…

The manticore inspected the tin foil unfurled between Spock's hands with poorly faked disinterest. "I don't know," she hedged, one paw curled up by her chest as she struggled against reaching out to paw at it.

"Not to worry," Jim said, hefting a medium sized cardboard box so it would be easier to dump onto the ground. "We have more." He released the contents with a series of rough shakes.

Dozens of multicolored cat toys Jim called _crinkle balls_ poured out over the ground. They varied in size from a few inches in diameter to larger than Spock's fist. The polyester film reflected rainbows across the walls and ceiling, stronger where the afternoon light hit them directly.

The manticore squealed like the high blare of a trumpet, pouncing on the pile to roll around in the shiny, noisy toys.

Jim tossed his empty box aside, walking toward the corner where the manticore had been sulking not even an hour earlier. He rooted around in the hay with his foot, stooping to pick up the small, tarnished silver spoon when he found it. "Y'know," Jim said, turning to the ecstatic manticore while he put the spoon in his pocket, "you don't have to live here unless it's what you want."

The manticore ignored him, happily batting one of the larger balls between her paws.

"I'm just saying," the Terran continued. "There are rescue groups. You could have a better home, someplace warm. I could send someone trustworthy out to talk to you. You don't have to live in this barn, unless it's what you want."

"A cryptid rescue group?" Spock asked. "Or one specific to manticores?"

"Either way," the manticore interrupted as Jim opened his mouth to explain, "it sounds dangerous. How do I know they're not out to kill me? A lot of humans are."

Jim nodded. "True. We're not, though. And we could have."

"Hardly," she scoffed.

"I could."

Spock watched the manticore size Jim up. At first, she continued to appear dismissive. Jim tilted his head, smile curling just at the corners, eyes locked with hers. Something unfurled between them, darkness Spock had sensed before—even from his first introduction to Jim at the fair—that seemed to live always in Jim, deep where it could stay hidden.

Most of the time.

Now Jim let the hint of it leak from his skin, solid enough that Spock could sense it without touching him. What would it be like if he could touch Jim, feel this… _otherness_ at its source? If Jim ever permitted it, would Spock be able to seek out the secret in his mind through a meld? Would it hide from him, or would it stretch out, hungry and beckoning, as it did now for the manticore? The echo of its long, grasping fingers stole the breath from Spock, stoking the curiosity that burned hotter in him every additional moment he spent in Jim's company.

Where did the darkness live? What was it? How had it come to be Jim's? Did it grow or fade with time? Would it always be part of him?

What did his mind look like, in or around or with the darkness?

Would he ever let Spock _see_?

"All right," the manticore said, voice shaken, ducked low against the ground with her ears folded back. "Okay, I get it. You can stop. Don't—Don't let it touch me. I believe you."

Jim nodded. Within a heartbeat, all traces of the darkness vanished, tucked neatly away inside a simple Terran vessel. "So if you want me to, I can contact a rescue group, have them send out someone trustworthy. Someone who wouldn't want to get on my bad side. Someone who _knows_ about me. But I won't, if you don't want me to. Maybe you just super like this barn, and you're not here only because you don't have anywhere else to be. Let me just throw out there that most cryptid rescues are really interested in getting you back to your homeland. So if you wanna get back to a more arid climate, this is your chance. Otherwise, good luck to you."

The manticore perked up slightly, ears and tail pricking forward as she set a paw deliberately on top of one of her new toys to make it crinkle. "…Home?" she asked with a wistful look around the barn. "You're sure?"

"On my eye," Jim swore, running a forefinger just under the darker.

"Send the rescue," the manticore said.

"Your change of heart seems rather abrupt," Spock said, ignoring the way Jim rolled his eyes. "How do we know you won't plan an ambush?"

The manticore climbed delicately into the box Jim had used to transport her crinkle balls, sitting upright to prevent its bursting at the seams. "He wouldn't cross something like that," she said with a pious sniff. "No one in our world would." She emphasized the possessive just enough to indicate what she thought of Spock's presence there.

"Hey," Jim scolded, "you be nice to both of us or nobody's coming to ship your ass back to the Mediterranean, got it? Spock's not from around here, he's still learning."

"Teach him better," the manticore suggested, distracting herself by trying to curl up in the box without destroying it.

Jim rolled his eyes again. "Whatever," he muttered. "We're gonna go now," he added to the manticore, who continued to ignore him. "Expect someone within the week." She didn't respond, and they left, back to the taxi to drive four hours to the house haunted by a ghost who demanded the silver spoon before he would "cross over".

"The manticore has a point," Spock pointed out nearly three hours into their drive.

"About what?" Jim asked around a wide yawn, leaning hard on Spock's shoulder like he would fall asleep at any moment.

"You should teach me more."

"Man," Jim grumbled, "have I not been—"

"About you."

Two-toned blue eyes flicked up to him. "Do you mean," he asked with a faint leer, "like, _biblically,_ or—"

"I do not understand your reference," Spock interrupted, "but based on your expression, likely not. You are _thirteen._ Even were I interested at present, that is too young."

"You're only fifteen," Jim protested. "It's not that big a—"

"I know there's something you won't tell me, Jim," Spock interrupted. "I know you're hiding something you think is terrible. And I want to know what it is."

Jim let out a long sigh, finally letting his head rest on Spock's arm. "You don't though," he said softly. "You wouldn't like it, if you knew. It's better you don't."

"Better for whom?" Spock challenged. "Me? No. I wish to see. Perhaps it is better for _you,_ as an act of self-preservation. But, Jim, I would know you. Bad and good. Has that not been obvious these three months? Since the beginning? You are my friend. I would have your thoughts. I would _know_ you."

"You sure you don't mean that the way it sounds like you mean it?" Jim asked weakly, eyes locked straight ahead as blood filled his cheeks. He shook his head. "You only say that because you don't _know—"_

"How can I?" Spock challenged. "You will not let me learn."

"You'd _hate_ it."

"I am Vulcan," Spock said. "Vulcans do not hate. It is illogical."

"You're human too," Jim pointed out. He shook his head again. "Look, let's finish with this ghost, get back to New York, maybe talk about it more calmly over, like, pho or something. We've got time. I'm not saying yes," he stressed, flashing Spock a serious, if brief, frown. "I'm saying…I'm saying maybe. Let's think about it a bit more first though."

From Jim, that was as good as a yes. Better, since now it would turn in his mind until he couldn't resist at least _trying_. He would want to know what Spock meant by _knowing,_ by having his thoughts. Would possibly even want to know Spock in return. Jim had so few connections with others, so unlike the majority of Terrans Spock had met in the past, each with a sprawling web of family and friends and acquaintances. He must surely be hungry for more. In fact, Jim was charming and clever and lovely, by Terran standards. By many standards.

Why did he not have more?

Spock curled his hands together in his lap in defense against the urge to reach over and touch Jim, the bare skin of his hands or throat or face. He could wait. Soon enough, nothing would stand between them, no measure of secret or confusion.

He could wait.

…

Kit yowled at them for almost ten minutes when they got back. "Do you know what it took to keep all this sage lit?" she cried as they offered the spoon to the ghost, who took it with a smile and faded into nothing, leaving the spoon to drop to the ground.

"Anti-climactic," Jim observed sourly, already sending a message to the family (friends of friends of Donna's, who offered a fine, rare whisky as payment) that their house was safe again.

"I don't have thumbs!" Kit continued to rant. "Once the pilot light on the stove went out I had to get _creative!"_

"I got you this," Jim said, pulling a crinkle ball out of his pocket to offer her.

"Do you think my outrage is that easy to satisfy?" she demanded, swatting the ball out of his hand and immediately giving chase. "I'm not done with my speech!" she said from beneath the table.

"Okay," Jim said to Spock, who blinked at him.

"Okay?" he echoed as he tried to figure out what Jim could mean.

Jim nodded. "When we get back to New York. Okay. You can…whatever. To know. We can do it."

"Ew," said Kit around the crinkle ball.

Spock's hand tingled in deeply un-Vulcan anticipation. Or, rather, the depth of the yearning was very Vulcan. His lack of control over it seemed slightly concerning, though not enough to turn him from his course.

"Okay," Spock said. He knelt to gather Kit into his arms and led the way back to the car.

The taxi dropped everyone off at Jim and Kit's home. Jim paid the driver an exorbitant number of credits, leaving a tip so generous several of the snakes (though not the driver) grinned in delight. Jim let Kit into the house, gave the bottle of whiskey and a rundown to Donna to pass on to the Doyles, and gestured for Spock to follow him back to the nearest rail station. They took assorted public transit vehicles back into the heart of New York. Once they were in a rather rundown area, Jim walked him through a fast food establishment for a take-out dinner, then led them to an abandoned church.

"It's kind of tradition," he said, setting up a makeshift picnic near the front where the setting sun could shine down on them from several holes in the ceiling. "Last time a big revelation thing went down, it was here. And that worked out, so. Here we are." Jim shook some French fries out onto an unfolded napkin. "Eat up, I guess. Better not to _know_ on an empty stomach. There's a salad somewhere in here too."

"Yes," Spock agreed dryly, having already removed the salad from its bag. "I was there when you purchased the food, Jim."

Jim sighed shakily, eyes on the cheeseburger held, partially unwrapped, in his hands. "Yeah, well." He began eating his food without further explanation.

"If you would rather not do this," Spock said, "we will not. Even if you are simply unsure, we will not. Perhaps I have placed too much pressure on you; I do not want you to be reluctant. This would be a deeply personal connection. There must be no coercion. It is all right, Jim." He opened his salad. "We will eat and go home. As you said earlier, we have time. Perhaps you will never wish to meld with me. That is well within your rights."

"Meld," Jim said around his burger, shooting Spock a curious glance. "Is that what you want to do?"

Spock blinked and swallowed his mouthful of greens. "Yes. Did I not specify?"

Jim shook his head.

"I am Vulcan," Spock pointed out. "Surely you know something of our abilities?"

"I could tell you a lot about vampires," Jim said, grabbing a few fries from their pile. "Or werewolves, or ghosts, or, like, a lot of other weird Earth creatures. I never really got around to off-world stuff. I noticed you're pretty strong. Does it have something to do with that?"

"Only so far as they both relate to differences in our biology." Spock frowned at his salad. "I apologize," he said. "I made a rather large assumption, for which I am wholly to blame. Why would you agree to come, if you did not know what I meant?"

Jim gestured vaguely with his cheeseburger. "Man, you know me. Curious to a fault. And, I figure, if it's something you wanna do, how bad can it be? Not sure if you noticed, Spock, but you're pretty awesome. I don't think you could suggest something I'd _hate,_ and I'll try anything once. Well," he amended, "not _anything_ anything. Don't wanna get bit by a werewolf or a vampire or be mummified or—"

"Vulcans," Spock interrupted him, "are touch telepaths."

"Really?" Jim asked. "Is that what that is? That, y'know." He wiggled his fingers at Spock in a gesture that defied interpretation.

"Really," Spock agreed, ignoring the rest of it. "Light touches provide surface details, generally pertaining to emotional states."

"Wait," Jim protested, "is that how you knew, with the nosferatu? You could tell it was messing with my mind because you were keeping pressure on the cut on my arm? You saw my emotional state, or whatever, through that?"

Spock nodded. "Further, I could tell when you transitioned from being controlled to… Honestly," he admitted, "I do not know what it was. There is _something_ that rose in you to battle the control it exerted over your mind. It… _consumed,_ I suppose, the connection, and I believe would have gone further, had you not pulled it back."

Jim's mouth was pressed into a thin, pale line. "You sensed that, huh."

"I have seen it several times," Spock said, picking out a cherry tomato to offer Jim, who ate it with a small, grateful smile. "Even from our first meeting. Do you remember? You carried me around for some time in your bare hands."

"Oh man," Jim groaned dramatically. "You were such a cute frog though. Could you tell I thought you were a cute frog?"

Spock felt his brow furrow and the tips of his ears flush pale green. "How can a frog be cute?"

"You were so serious," Jim laughed.

"I am Vulcan," Spock reminded him.

Jim just shook his head. "It's more than that, I think. Anyway, so you couldn't tell I thought you were the cutest frog ever. What _did_ you sense?"

"When we were in the back room with the unnamed creature," Spock reminded him, "and I was about to ask—"

"Oh," Jim said, expression and tone equally flat. "I didn't think you'd—Why are you still here?" he asked, frustrated now as he picked at the seeds on his cheeseburger bun. "If you sensed or saw or… _experienced_ that, or whatever. Why didn't you run at the first chance?"

"Why would I run?" Spock wondered, pushing his plastic fork through the remaining salad. "You never posed any threat to me. Rather, you protected me when I was extremely vulnerable, at no benefit to yourself. Whatever the darkness in you is, wherever it came from, you only touched it twice I could tell: Once to stop me from indebting myself to the creature, once to break the spell on the door to the witches' lounge so we could reach my mother. Who, I am sure, engineered her lesson that day at least in part so we would meet."

"You think so?" Jim asked wistfully. "You think she'd do that for someone like me?"

"I think she did it for both of us," Spock said. "Why do you persist in categorizing yourself as something awful?"

Jim hesitated, then glanced at Spock. He looked around nervously before drawing a deep breath. "I wasn't born like this," he said, gesturing to his darker left eye. "They used to match and everything. Something…happened. I made a choice, when I was little, and it was—" His mouth twisted bitterly. "The wrong one. Kit saved me from making it worse, but I got this eye before she could—

"There are repercussions," Jim said, shaking his head sharply. "I don't know if they'll get worse with time. It's stronger than it was back then, but I don't know if it'll keep getting stronger or if it'll, like, level out. I have control of it. Now, anyway. If it keeps getting stronger—Well. We'll see."

"And what was it?" Spock asked, low and coaxing. "What happened that gave you the eye?"

"The button," Jim whispered. He looked over at Spock, unsure and determined. "Tell me more about the meld."

"If I touch you here," Spock said, dropping the salad to press his fingers to Jim's psy-points, "I can build a link between us. It is called a mind meld. I will see you, and you, in turn, will see me. There is no closer way to be together as people."

Jim sucked in a breath. A deep yearning, marked through with unusual hunger, burned through Spock where he was touching Jim. "It might be dangerous," the Terran said. "I don't know what she did. I don't know what she _left._ You could get hurt."

"I am most skilled at this," Spock reassured him, letting his thumb stroke over Jim's soft, warm skin. "I exceed the capabilities of all my peers. With training, I could be better still. You will not hurt me, Jim. And I will not hurt you. What do you wish to do?"

Blue eyes slid closed. Terran hands lifted to wrap around sensitive Vulcan wrists. Jim pressed his face into Spock's hold. "Do it," he murmured.

"My mind to your mind," Spock said, reaching out to build the link between them. "My thoughts to your thoughts."

At first, everything looked and felt the way Spock expected. Each mind was unique, but consciousness was built along patterns. Jim's patterns twisted and flourished in Spock's sight, vibrant in a way no Vulcan mind was. His delight lit the shared space between them, curiosity and joy spilling over into Spock's mind, leaping between observation and speculation and certainty, seeking to know and be known. All of Jim was golden and bright and with Spock.

Except.

Tendrils reached through Jim's mind, long and thin like needles, like knives. They cut out from a distant, gaping black circle, pierced through and woven four times, greatly resembling—

A button.

A round, jagged button of darkness, drinking in Jim's light in slow, steady gulps, leaving behind more grasping lines of attack. Jim's mind had built protections against the spread. Spock could see how even now he tapped the shadows for strength he turned against it, blocking it up as best he could. Some of the dams were cracked; doubtless this was how Jim siphoned power to threaten or attack his enemies, to protect those under his care. With each effort, he broke his walls a little further.

The darkness was winning. Slow. Inexorable. If Jim did not learn how better to fashion his blockades, or if he could not break off the darkness at its source, he would be lost to it. Maybe in ten years. Maybe in five.

But it would happen.

Jim's mind dimmed and shuttered, closing down around Spock's realization.

 _I told you,_ he whispered through every corner of Spock. _I told you it was better not to know._

 _Knowledge is preferable to ignorance,_ Spock thought back at him, wrapping his conviction around Jim's retreating trust. _Where did you get the button?_

 _I let her,_ Jim replied, echoing faintly in the dark places, a child's voice underscoring what Spock was used to. _I let her sew the button._

 _Why?_

 _I thought she would love me._

 _Did she?_

Jim's memory of the event flooded around them, too fast and fractured to make sense, flashes of a woman with button eyes smiling at Jim, warm and kind and all of it a lie. Spock saw the box she offered him, packed brightly and containing two glossy black buttons and a silver needle. Jim reached for the box and—

Spock gasped, thrown back from Jim by the force of his refusal to let Spock see any more. They sat by each other, panting, Spock watching Jim while Jim dug the heels of his shaking hands into his eyes.

"That's enough," Jim said hoarsely. "There's no point in seeing any more."

"There is," Spock insisted. "If I knew what—"

" _No."_ Jim's voice broke on the word. "That's—that's enough."

Oh. _Jim_ couldn't take anymore. Well, the scene had appeared to be fairly traumatic. That certainly made sense. "All right," Spock said, reaching out to touch one of Jim's knees. It trembled under his hand but did not pull away. "We will stop. Thank you, Jim. You shared quite generously. I have not ever touched a mind like yours before."

"Broken?" Jim spat.

Spock shook Jim's knee. " _Resonate._ We suit each other well. Sometime in the future, when you are recovered, I would like to try again."

Jim lowered his hands to stare at Spock. "You're joking."

"I am Vulcan," Spock reminded him. "We do not _joke."_

"Then you're _crazy._ Who would want to see that again?" Jim's hands fluttered around his own chest. " _I_ don't want to see it again!"

"It was educational," Spock protested.

"Educational," Jim said faintly. He shook his head, not in disagreement so much as disbelief. "I'm taking you back to your hotel. This is sleep deprivation talking or something. You clearly need some _rest."_

"Yes," Spock agreed, gathering their trash. Jim helped him consolidate it all into a single bag, which he gripped tight as they stood. "I believe we should both rest, perhaps for a day or two, and reconvene to discuss what we saw."

"I know what I saw," Jim complained, fist white-knuckled around the bag. "I was there."

"Even still," Spock insisted. He rose fluidly, then extended a hand to help Jim up. Jim hesitated for only a moment before accepting it. The Terran's emotions raged beneath his skin like a storm in the desert, wild and destructive. Spock pushed his own calm at Jim, trying to guide him back to equilibrium.

Jim withdrew his hand. "Let's go," he said, leading the way back to the subway.

The trip back to the hotel was silent. Jim continued to storm, and Spock was forced to let him. When they reached the hotel, before stepping through the doors, Spock turned to settle a firm look on Jim. "I am not afraid," he said. "I do not regret sharing this experience with you. For now, you may leave, and find solace and calm in your own way. But I will see you again, Jim."

"You say that now," Jim said, eyes locked on Spock's left shoulder, his own arms crossed tight across his chest. "Wait until you've had some time to think it over."

Spock stepped close again to press his hand to the cross of Jim's wrists, sharing with Jim the strength of his own conviction. "My opinion will not change," he said, and watched Jim's struggle to believe him. "You are my friend, Jim. I will see you in a few days."

Jim let out a long breath. "A few days," he agreed. Spock stepped back, watched Jim turn back toward the subway, and let him go.

For now.

…

When he got back up to his floor, the suite he shared with his parents was alive with activity. Amanda met him at the door with a PADD displaying an itinerary for travel from Earth to Vulcan.

 _Their_ itinerary.

"This is for tomorrow morning," Spock said.

"Yes," Amanda agreed, gentle with compassion.

"I see." Spock handed the PADD back then folded his hands carefully at the small of his back. "Father's business ended more abruptly than I concluded it would."

"I asked Sarek to give us more time," Amanda said, brushing her fingers over Spock's cheek in a fleeting, regretful caress. "He would not be persuaded. I think he might be…concerned about the time you've spent away from home and your studies."

"He does not like how often I am gone," Spock corrected her. "Let us be honest, Mother. We both know my grades in the distance courses have shown no decline from what they were on Vulcan. In fact, my overall quality of work has gone up. He does not approve of my activities _around_ my schooling. Despite not ever having met him, he does not approve of Jim."

"I won't defend him to you," Amanda said through a sigh. "Your father loves you; his manner of showing it can be less than ideal. What will you do?"

"An excellent question," he said, meeting her eyes. "What will I do, Mother?"

Amanda looked surprised. "In all the time since you learned about me," she said softly, "you've never asked. Why now?"

"This is important," Spock said. "I'm sure you see my goals in relation to Jim. No doubt the change in my ambitions regarding my future was at least part of the reason you arranged our introduction in the first place."

"Yes," she agreed, unashamed. "You shine so much more brightly by his side, and he in your company. Yours is a destiny beyond my control, beyond anyone's control. Except, perhaps, your own. I have no insight for you. You must decide: What will you do?"

"I must find a way to contact him." Spock thought back to Jim's fear from earlier that night, his bone-deep belief that Spock would leave. "He will not understand." A flare of irritation curled through Spock's control. _Nor,_ he did not say, _should he have to._

Unfortunately, Spock's options for reaching Jim were few. Jim carried no PADD or other communication devices, claiming they did not "like him". If the Hendersons had any method of contact more modern than a rotary phone, Spock had never seen it, and he had certainly never been given the number. He knew the general way to Jim's house, but not with enough confidence to attempt public transit on his own. Jim would never come to the hotel in enough time to find a letter. The cleaning staff, efficient to a fault, would have their suite in pristine order within an hour of their leaving. Jim would not think to look for him for at least a few days.

Still, he must _try._

Spock turned to leave the hotel room again, PADD tucked under one arm. He would find his way back to Jim's house. He would explain.

Amanda reached out to grip his wrist and abruptly drew close by his side. "You will only be able to succeed at one battle," she murmured. "The one now, or the one later. I cannot tell you which to fight. Know, my son, that you _must_ chose."

Before Spock could ask what she meant, Sarek appeared in the doorway to the master bedroom. He studied Spock with the perfect calm of an adult Vulcan. "Spock," he said. "I see your mother has informed you of our morning schedule. It is appropriate that you have returned from your…day out. Pack your belongings in preparation of our return to Vulcan."

"Affirmative, Father," Spock said, turning to face him with both hands clasped around the PADD behind his back. "First there is an errand I must complete. It should take no more than an hour and have no impact upon my readiness for tomorrow's journey."

Sarek's calm expression deepened into disapproval. "You seek out the Terran male. His company is beneath yours," Father said, firm and certain as though he had actually ever so much as met Jim.

"I disagree," Spock said with as much deference as he could manage. "He has gone well out of his way to teach me a number of Terran customs that have made my experiences in this city far richer than they would have been were I left here on my own. Though he is young, the depth and breadth of his knowledge is nothing less than exemplary. I owe him notice of my leave."

"You owe him nothing," Sarek replied immediately. "Your human emotions, encouraged by too much exposure to this boy, are overcoming you. We must return to Vulcan immediately. You will have no further contact with him."

"I will," Spock insisted, taking a half step forward, anger hot under his heart.

Amanda's hand touched his arm again.

His statement was true: Spock _would_ have further contact with Jim. Amanda, a seer, had confirmed it. Spock would fight his father and win, and see Jim again, for whatever time was left to them.

Was _now_ the time he should fight for?

If he won this fight and went to Jim, his father would find him, eventually. Spock was fifteen; he could not stay on Earth without his parents. Amanda said two fights would happen, and only one was winnable. So was _this_ the fight worth having? With it reward stretching out only a few days at most?

Spock could go with them. He could surrender this fight, go back to Vulcan. He could grow strong and independent. Later, as an adult, he could fight his father again. If he pretended now to listen, that fight could have a longer impact. Spock could return to Earth, somehow, and live here. With Jim. For as long as they both lived.

That would mean leaving Earth without telling Jim, who would not understand the wordless separation. Worse, he would read intentions into it that did not exist. He would never know how Spock felt, having to abandon him so soon after the meld, how it tore at him behind his shield. It would be years before Spock could return. He would have to spend that time rearranging his whole life, his goals assessed and put into entirely different configurations. Three years stretched between him and adulthood. He had only that time to put his affairs on Vulcan in order.

"You will _not,"_ his father said, bringing Spock's attention back to the fight at hand.

Spock put his faith in his mother, putting his hand over hers so she would feel his resolve underscoring the lies he wove for his father's sake. "Perhaps it is for the best," Spock said, mind whirling. "I am sure Jim will understand."

Amanda inclined her head, expression serene, sorrow and pride rushing through their familial bond. "As you say, my son." She gestured toward his private rooms. "Most of our belongings have already been packed by the moving crew. I took the liberty of insisting they leave your room alone. You have a lot of work to do."

Spock's room was filled with the trinkets and mementos of his time with Jim, none of which he wanted outsider people to witness. He nodded his thanks. "Consider it done."

In the morning, they left.

* * *

For once, Jim was himself. The hungry thing in his dreams was not a shadow of the deeper darkness in himself but its own creature. It prowled in empty alleyways of an unfinished town. Half-built houses and storefronts lined dirt roads not yet paved smooth. The creature in his dream was looking for food but there was none yet. It knew the houses would attract prey soon, and until then it would have to content itself with plans for how best to nurture that prey to full, ripe terror.

The hungry thing noticed him. Layers of it pulled back to reveal rows upon rows of sharp, jagged teeth in the parody of a smile. "The seer is right," it said to him, mouth unmoving, voice snarling out of a deep place in its body. "You do not have to come here. Leave it to me, child. There is nothing you can do to stop my feeding. I will have them, whether you are here or not. This star is my mother; all the worlds of Tarsus are my hunting ground. You should have looked for me before you settled.

"But come, if you will." Its jaw creaked open, displaying a bottomless maw seething with hunger. "I will have you too, you and your power. The Beldam's half breed child—you will make a sweet dessert."

The creature leapt forward, mouth yearning for him.

Jim jerked awake with a cry, throwing himself out of bed and onto the floor in his efforts to get away. His heart raced under the frantic gasping of his lungs.

"Jim!" Kit leapt onto the floor beside him, tail lashing as she nudged her nose against his cheek. "Are you alright? What happened!"

"Tarsus," he gasped. "The thing—the hungry thing, it said _Tarsus."_ He turned to Kit, eyes wild. "Do you know what Tarsus is?"

She shook her head quickly. "No, Jim. I've never heard of it. Let's get Donna and Dave, they'll know!"

"No." Jim groaned, wrapping his arms around his stomach and leaning forward to rest his burning forehead on the cool wood flooring. "They don't know about the dreams. How would I explain why I want to know?"

Kit made an impatient sound. "Don't be stupid, Jim, of course they know you're having bad dreams! Donna is a vampire; Dave is a _werewolf._ They've smelt your distress for months! Ask them about Tarsus. Tell them about the dreams. Get some _advice,_ for goodness sake! You can't keep going on like this!"

Before Jim could decide either way, the door to his room slid open. Donna and Dave circled the bed to kneel on either side of him, pulling him into a long, firm family hug. "Tell us," Donna implored.

"We will do everything in our power to help you," Dave added, stroking Jim's hair gently. "First, you must tell us."

Jim did.

He described every dark, ravenous dream he'd had in the last few months, explaining the constant, growing sense that he was needed somewhere. The stars called to him, not as a savior of a distant world but as an accomplice to the creature that said it wanted to eat a world. The Beldam wanted to have a share in the feast, but the Beldam was dead, living now only in the button she would have used to devour Jim.

Now the creature on that distant world had seen Jim. Recognized him. Jim could stay on Earth and hide from it. He could seek it out and try to stop it. Either way, some part of him would be lost.

"I can't leave all those people to die," he whispered over the mug of hot chocolate Dave had dragged him down to the kitchen to drink. "But the creature said it would eat me, and I believe it." Tears filled his eyes, no matter how hard he fought against them. "I don't want to be eaten. I don't want _them_ to be eaten. I don't know what to do."

"Here's a step one," Donna said gently. "For now, try to go back to bed. Dave and I will figure out what Tarsus is tomorrow, and we can decide from there."

"Tarsus is a star," Jim said without looking up. "The creature must be on one of its planets. People aren't done settling yet, so it must be a new colony world. The list of prospective colonies get published in an official Star Fleet quarterly periodical. We could search the database and know within seconds."

"Yes," Donna agreed with fond exasperation, flicking a dehydrated marshmallow at him, "but that's not your job, Jim. We're still your guardians; we can do the figuring out for you. Give us a day, okay? Do something fun tomorrow. We'll talk about it over dinner."

Jim got up to set his empty hot chocolate mug in the sink. "Okay," he said. "Sounds good. I'll try to go back to bed."

Dave and Donna tucked him in like they hadn't since he declared himself too old more than a year ago. Jim let them, waiting patiently for the sound of them settling back in their own room.

Then he left, Kit perched on his shoulders complaining about how stupid he was.

It took only about twenty minutes to get to Spock's building, then another five to sneak up to the suite where the ambassador's family was staying. Jim's initial plan had been to knock, but the door was already ajar. The muted whirring of a half dozen cleaner bots leaked out into the hallway. An unsettled feeling began turning in Jim's stomach. He pushed the door open and stepped inside.

Everything was gone.

The cleaner bots worked industriously over every generic surface of the room. No trace of Spock or his family remained, not the shoes by the door, not the strange Vulcan art. Jim picked his way around the bots to check Spock's room.

Empty.

They were gone.

Something sharp twisted in Jim's chest.

Spock was gone. Without so much as a note or a call or—anything. He was gone. Fled.

Just as Jim had predicted he would.

They never should have melded. If Spock had never seen the ugly black of Jim's mind, he might have stayed. Or at least said goodbye, or told the lobby staff to pass a message along, or—

But he hadn't. Spock had seen Jim's mind and cut him out like cancer.

"Bot," Jim whispered, hardly noticing when all the units within hearing distance paused in their tasks to attend his request. "How long has this room been unoccupied."

"Eighteen hours," the bots replied as one. "Additional query or resume task?"

"Resume task," Kit said when Jim's silence threatened to stretch out into eternity. "We don't know why he left," she murmured into Jim's ear once the whirring began again. "We don't _know_ why he didn't leave a message. You can't assume—"

"It doesn't matter," Jim interrupted.

Kit's ears folded back uncertainly. "…Why not?"

"One of us would have had to say goodbye soon anyway. This is better. Cleaner. Now we're not the ones who have to leave first."

"Jim." Kit's voice shook with growing fear. "Why would we need to say goodbye, Jim? Where are we going."

Jim turned on his heel, marching them out of the room, jaw locked with determination. "Because we're going too, Kit. Not to Vulcan.

"To Tarsus."

So they answered the call and went. They slayed the hungry monster and lived.

And nothing was ever the same.


	3. The Doctor in the Fairy Ring

AN: BLAM, here it is: Bones' chapter, wherein he meets Jim, Kit, Sulu, and Chekov, who all endeavor to make his life more difficult in any ways they can.

This ends at Starfeel Academy, yaaay. (Poor Bones.)

ALSO I changed a bit at the end of the previous chapter, so make sure you peek at it or the next one will be a little confusing at first.

* * *

The Doctor in the Fairy Ring

* * *

In the deep dark of the woods near his house, Len McCoy stood beside a ring of mushrooms. Despite the tall trees growing all around it, the ring was illuminated by a bright ray of late morning sunshine. The mushrooms, fat stems capped with wide white hats, seemed almost to gleam. Somewhat fittingly, a black cat stepped out of the shadows to sit just at the sunlight's edge.

Len hated it on sight. He hated the cat, the mushroom ring, this forest, and the baby cradled in the bend of his left arm. None of it deserved to be here, ruining his life like it didn't matter.

The baby fussed weakly, fighting the sedative Len had fed it at breakfast when Jocelyn wasn't looking. Jocelyn would be furious if she knew. But then, Jocelyn _didn't_ know. Len didn't need her to.

He could fix this on his own.

Len squared his shoulders and stepped toward the mushroom ring, shifting the baby so he could toss it in the middle. The black cat stood and began walking in his direction.

A hand from out of nowhere gripped around his elbow.

Len startled so badly he nearly dropped the baby.

"Careful," a male voice said just beside his ear. "You don't want to hurt her."

"Don't I," Len snapped in return, yanking his arm out of the stranger's hand.

"Not if you want your daughter back whole."

Len jerked around in shock, finally setting eyes on the new arrival. He was a kid, maybe somewhere in his teens, looking fresh-faced and not even old enough to shave. Blond hair hung across his forehead and curled around the bottom of his ears. He wore clothes too big for him, making him look frail. Despite that, his posture was confident, his shoulder and back straight under Len's suspicious gaze. His eyes were blue, the right pale as the sky at noon. The left was darker in a strange pattern that Len would have guessed was a tattoo or contact.

It didn't feel like a tattoo.

It felt… _deep_. Dark. Black sapphire like a warning around four tiny, distinct spots of blue. It drew him in the way mud caught horses, sucking and inevitable.

Something bit his ankle.

Len drew back with a gasp, cursing as he looked down.

The black cat looked back up at him, expression utterly unimpressed.

"Thanks a lot," Len muttered.

"You're welcome," the cat said.

Len yelped and leapt even further back.

One of the cat's ears flicked. "Not very brave," it murmured.

"Kinda smart though," the boy replied, crouching so the cat could spring up to perch on his shoulder. "Good instincts."

The cat made a derisive sound but didn't say anything else.

Thank the lord.

"I'm Jim," the boy said, turning back to Len. He jiggled the arm the cat was on. "This is Kit. We're not here to help you, but it looks like we might be going to the same place. Might as well go together, since you don't seem to have a good grasp on what's a good idea to do and what isn't."

"How do you know?" Len snapped.

The boy—Jim nodded toward the baby. "That's a changeling child, and you were gonna toss it in a fairy ring. Bad idea, if the goal is to get back the baby they took from you."

"I have to save her," Len said, some of his desperation seeping through the cracked walls of the fear and anger that motivated him. "I won't let them keep my baby girl."

Jim shrugged. "Good goal. It won't be a fun life for her on that side of things. Chucking the impostor into a fairy ring still won't help you."

Len struggled with his distrust for a long minute. "Okay," he said at last, and slowly, the concession drawn from him like taffy on a pull. "So why not?"

"Fairy rings summon fairies that force the mortal who crossed into them to dance," the cat said, "unto death. You're not tossing in a mortal though, are you?" She pricked her whiskers forward in consideration of the changeling. "You're tossing in another fairy. They'd just take it home, and you've lost your bargaining chip."

"Not to mention what they'd do to your daughter," Jim added. "Y'know. In revenge for trying to hurt one of theirs."

Len's trembling arms tightened around the baby. His heart raced in his chest. "So what do I do?" he asked hoarsely. "How do I save her?"

"We have an errand," the cat said. "Not with whatever traded babies with you, but in the same neighborhood. You can come with us."

"Why would you help me?" Len demanded. "What's in it for you?"

"Nothing's in it for us," Jim said with an eye roll. "We're just…fucking _morons."_

"And you can take me to my daughter?"

"We have bigger fish to fry," the cat said.

"Rude, Kit," Jim said mildly. He tilted his head in thought. "True though. But like I said, we'll be in a similar neighborhood."

"Okay," Kit said to Jim, twisting around to paw at his nose, "but you gotta promise me not to get further involved than that. No negotiating for the human baby. No, like, offering yourself in its place."

"No monster slaying?" Jim asked with a grin.

Kit shook her head. "I could probably be convinced." She turned to Len like he was the intruder. Which, well, there were two of them. He probably was. "What's your name? Or I can just call you Moron the whole time."

Len scowled. "I'm not _actually_ a moron," he said. "I know better than to give my real name to…whatever it is you are. Names have power, _Kit._ "

"You don't say," Kit drawled.

"Where did you learn about that?" Jim asked, turning in a slow circle to assess the clearing around the fairy ring. He began walking in the direction of the sun.

"Same place I learned about changelings," Len said, watching Jim's shadow grow longer the closer he got to the light source.

"Cagey," Kit observed. "Cute, but not helpful. We're going to need to know where you got your education so we can have some idea on what help we might be able to expect from you in the future. My money's on hedge witch," she added to Jim.

"I am a _med student,_ " Len sputtered.

"So's a hedge witch-in-training," Kit snarked. "Plus that's not a no."

Once the sun was fully behind Jim, he turned to face the fairy circle. "Might have guessed he was learning to be a doctor," Jim said absently, stretched his hand out so the shadow it cast spilled into the fairy ring. "He reminds me of Wentworth."

Kit made a sound of deep comprehension. "Just another grumpy pile of bones."

"I am not the skeletal figure here," Len hissed. "Each of you looks half starved!"

Jim ignored him, even as Kit flatted her ears and poofed up her tail and growled low in her throat. "Who's starving?" she demanded through her snarl.

"Bones didn't mean anything by it," Jim said, lifting his free hand to pet her calm. The other, still extended over the ring, clenched abruptly, digging its long, shadowed fingers into the earth surrounded by mushrooms.

His shade drove divots into the ground, four deep parallel trenches, until they snagged on the turned soil. Jim lifted and pulled, drawing the circle up into a mound even as the world around them groaned in protest. The trees darkened and shook; the birds took flight; the lush, green grass browned everywhere his shadow touched it.

In the distance, a hawk screamed its fury.

Still Jim pulled. His left eye gleamed like polished bone painted the color of the sky on the edge of a hurricane. The mound rose, crowned by the fairy ring, until it was nearly as tall as Len.

"That's enough, Jim," Kit told him. She twisted around to bite his ear when Jim didn't respond.

The kid sucked in a breath, eyes wide the moment before he shut them tight. His forehead creased and beaded with sweat. The fingers on his extended hand began to shake. At last, he breathed out, and curled his hand into a fist.

Light returned to clearing.

"What was _that,"_ Len breathed.

"Just a little trick," Jim said as he struggled to control the tremors rattling his underfed body. It took him less time than Len would have guessed.

Len hesitated a long moment before saying, "Listen, as a doctor, I don't think y'all're in any condition to—"

"Don't even get me started," the cat sighed. "You're not even actually a doctor yet, and even if you were, he won't listen. It's been, what, over a year? Since what happened to his body happened, and look at him. A stiff breeze could bow him over. Sometimes _I_ make him wobble. He's the _worst_ at taking care of himself."

"Thanks, peanut gallery," Jim grumbled, straightening so he could approach the hill he'd created. "Are we gonna do this or what?"

"Not if you're gonna die doin' it," Len said. He walked toward the forest line to retrieve his backpack, juggling it with the changeling on his way over to Jim. "There are protein bars in the front pocket." He shoved the bag toward Jim. "Eat one or we're not going."

"Or _you're_ not going," Jim reminded him, hands in his pockets rather than reaching for the bag. "Kit and I are going either way."

Kit leapt lightly from Jim's shoulders to Len's.

Jim heaved a deep, put-upon sigh. "Fine," he said, taking the bag to rummage through it. "I'll eat _one_ protein bar—"

"There's a bottle water too," Len said. "Because hydration is _important."_

"Of course there is. One protein bar," he said brandishing it at Kit. He tucked it under his arm to pull out a bottle of water, which he shook at Len. " _One_ water. Then can we _please_ just go and get this over with?"

"Fine by me," Len said. Jim drank half the water in a single gulp, devoured the protein bar, and finished the rest of the bottle, all in under five minutes. "Well that was gross and deeply unhealthy," the med student commented wryly.

"At least he ate," Kit murmured in his ear. Jim slung the bag on his own back, lifting one shoulder as invitation to the cat. She jumped back over to her usual perch, butting against Jim's blond head with a slight purr. Jim shut his eyes, only for a moment, then turned back to the mound.

He didn't speak. But something in him, something that buzzed like mayflies in Len's ears, said _Open._

A door appeared in the hill. It sprung open when Jim approached it. He held it wide with his left hand, then gave Len a little bow to usher him through.

Filled with equal amounts of trepidation and resolve, Len walked forward.

…

Len cradled Joanna in his arms, pressing her face into his shoulder as he soothed her crying, and tried not to look at the dismembered body of the…whatever it was at Jim's feet. "What are you?" he asked, not looking at Jim either.

"Not anything, really," Jim said. Len's eyes flicked to the teenager's face at the bleakness in his words. Jim's shadow still stretched across the floor, sharp and angular, looking nothing like it should, causing the creature's body to bubble and hiss everywhere they touched. "I've tried to be a lot of things. The only one that's really stuck is monster hunter. So I'm that, I guess. A bad thing that kills bad things."

"That's so stupid," Kit hissed from her place twining in between Jim's ankles. "You aren't _bad._ You made a mistake as a kid. How much longer will you make yourself pay for it?"

Len's grandmother had been really thorough in his education. She taught him everything she knew, any detail that might one day help him save a life—his own or someone else's. "The things in the dark are there whether or not you know about them," she'd said the one and only time he'd ever complained about the lessons that took up every spare moment of his time after school. "Who knows who might one day need you to have this knowledge. Now sit down before I tell your mama you fussed at me."

So Len knew a lot of things about a lot of things, even putting aside his ongoing education. He knew about the creatures that preyed on children, the things they did to lure them into their nests. His grandmother had showed him images of long, creeping hands, friendly faces and eyes so dead they weren't even real. He knew about the buttons.

"The Beldam," he breathed, all his attention zeroed in on Jim's dark blue eye, flat and menacing when he used his power. "You survived the _Beldam?"_ His hold on Joanna tightened. "Good god, man. Will she… Can she track you? Is she going to come after you?"

"We killed the Beldam," Kit said, calm and unflinching in the face of Len's disbelief. "She got to Jim before I could stop her, but we killed her in payment for the eye she took. Sadie Doyle bound the button. Even still, there's some…" She tilted her head as though searching for just the right world. "Let's call it spillover."

Len felt shock buzz under his skin, numbing his mouth and cheeks. "You're the Doyle boy?" he heard himself ask as if from a great distance. "They said you died. On…on Tarsus. There was something there, and you killed it, and it killed you. No one's heard of you since. Why are you in _Mississippi?_ "

"Mississippi was the closest door to the creature I wanted to kill," Jim muttered, paying more attention to shaking the goopy innards of his latest enemy off his arms than to Len and Kit's conversation about him. "So here we are. I might as well have died back then; what does it matter where I am now?"

Kit whipped around to bite his ankle. When Jim cursed, she said, quite primly, "We've talked about this."

Jim scowled down at her. "You said you'd _object_ to me saying things like that, not that you're bite me!"

"I said I'd object _strongly,_ " Kit said, eyes wide and innocent as a kitten's.

"Can we get back to the Beldam and your rumored _death?"_ Len demanded. "Why haven't you told the community! Last year's fair had a _commemoration ceremony_ for you!"

"Was I in it?" Kit asked, tail lashing.

Len threw his free hand in the air. "Yes!" He immediately began soothing Joanna when she fussed at him.

"It's not my fault they don't know I'm still working," Jim objected. "The Doyles and the Hendersons don't think I'm dead."

"Although that's probably due to how you live with them," Kit pointed out. "Well, with the Hendersons, when you live anywhere nowadays, but you sleep off a lot of your injuries on that couch in the Doyles' suite they never remember having bought for you."

" _Sleep off?"_ Len sputtered.

Jim tilted his head as though listening for something. "Sounds like company incoming," he said, kneeling so Kit could hop onto his shoulder. She made a face at the ichor, but did all the same. "Let's get out of here."

"Hey," Len protested, following in Jim's wake. "Hey! Are you telling me you just _sleep off_ your injuries? That's not how that works!"

"Is," Kit said, curing her tail around Jim's head to tickle his ear with it. "Ever since Tarsus, anyway. Jim doesn't want to bother Dr. Wentworth. Not when his abilities are—"

"So," Jim interrupted firmly, "must be nice to have your daughter back."

Len shifted Joanna against his shoulder. "It is. But it'd also be nice if I knew you kids were taken care of once this is over."

"We take care of ourselves fine," Jim said, pressing forward into an imposing darkness. He reached out to grasp something unseen, then turned. Light spilled into the shadows around them. Len squinted against it before following Jim through the doorway.

And back into the forest where they're started.

The mound collapsed behind them, returning to a simple fairy ring.

"Don't come back to this area," Jim told Len, lifting a hand in goodbye. "Have a good—"

"No," Len said, mulishness rearing its head at last. "Not until I check you over. Heaven only knows the kind of damage that…whatever…did before I found you. You're sitting through an exam and that's the end of it."

Jim stared at him. Exasperation built in his expression like heat in a kettle close to boiling. "You're not even a real doctor. You could be faking that you know anything about medicine at all! What makes you think I would—"

"I'm a med student, not a charlatan! I have more than enough first aid training to—"

"Real or not," Kit interrupted, "I'm not going anywhere until you let him fix you up." She knocked her head sideways into Jim's. "You won't go to Wentworth, so Bones it is."

"I am not," Jim began hotly.

"We should go back to my house," Len told Kit, rearranging his estimation of who the more reasonable of the two was. "I have to put Jo down, and I have a small office that can double as a clinic around the back."

"Lay on," Kit replied.

Len hesitated. "Have you..." He shook his head, then made himself ask. "Have you read _Macbeth?"_

"It is a tale told by an idiot," she said, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

"I need a drink," Len said, turning to lead them to his house.

"Same," Jim muttered.

"What're you?" Len demanded, rocking Jo a little to encourage her to sleep. "Like, _twelve?"_

"Sixteen," Jim said defensively.

"Oh good," Len muttered to himself, "he's _sixteen."_

"You should notice I'm not following you," Jim called from the clearing.

"You will be soon," Kit said. Len glanced back in time to see her jump lightly from Jim's shoulder, then set off into the woods.

"Hey!" Jim protested. "I don't have to follow just because _you_ are. I could go home without you!"

Len slowed down so Kit didn't have to run to keep up. "Want a ride?" he asked, looking down at her picking her way over the cluttered forest floor.

"Give it a minute," she said, leaping gracefully over a large root.

Behind them, Jim cursed. "You could get eaten!" he scolded, scooping her off the ground when he caught up.

She let him snuggle her close like a favorite teddy bear. "Bones will make you feel better," she said. "Then we can go home. I know you hate it; it's gonna happen anyway. Make peace with your future."

Jim scowled but didn't reply, his fingers itching over her head.

"You two need to stop calling me Bones," Len sighed. "I don't care _how_ skinny your doctor was—"

"Skeleton," Jim interrupted, still not looking at him.

Len frowned at him. "What?"

"Wasn't skinny. Dr. Wentworth is a magical animated skeleton. Been working in medicine since nobody knows when."

Len turned that over in his head a few times. "Wouldn't mind picking his brain, 'scuse the expression. He must know a lot."

"Hedge witchery only gets you so far," Kit commiserated, lifting her chin for a scratch when Jim's fingers moved that way.

"I'll let you get away with calling me a hedge witch—"

"Because it's what you _are."_

"But y'all have to stop calling me Bones." He nodded. "Call me my actual name."

"We don't know it," Jim pointed out sullenly.

"Leonard McCoy."

They both stared at him. "Ew," Kit said.

"We could go with McCoy," Jim suggested.

"I go by _Len,_ " he protested. "There's nothing wrong with Len!"

"Except that we'd know it's short for _Leonard,"_ Kit said, flicking her tail and pronouncing it _Leo-nard._ "We could call you _Nard_ instead."

"Len is fine," Jim told Kit. "We've called worse people by worse things. We won't even know him long enough for it to be a problem."

"Well I'm still calling him Bones," Kit said. "It's way better than _Len."_

"You shouldn't call me anything," Len said, "not in front of the, uh…uninitiated."

Kit rolled not just her eyes but her whole head. "No, go on, keep telling me the ways I should act to protect myself, I haven't figured it out yet on my own. I'm riveted."

Len felt a blush rise in his cheeks. "I was just trying to be helpful," he protested.

"Yeah and I'm sure it'd be great advice if I were an _idiot."_

"Is that your house?" Jim interrupted, looking forward toward the forest line.

Len lifted his gaze to check. There it was: the little cottage he'd rented with Jocelyn since way back when they first moved out of the college dorms. Affection warmed his chest. "Yes," he said.

"Over the hill and through the woods," Jim sang softly.

"To Bones' house we go," Kit trilled in conclusion, rising up to butt her head into Jim's chin. He nuzzled her thoughtlessly, gaze still caught on the house.

Len reached out to bump his arm. "Come on," he said gently. "It won't be that bad."

…

It _was_ that bad.

Joanna didn't want to be put down. Not for a nap, not in her high chair, not for _anything._

Kit had devoted herself to the mission of exploring every nook and cranny, particularly those that put her directly underfoot.

Jim was a terrible patient. He sat on the edge of Len's counter rather than the patient table, swinging his legs and refusing to answer any diagnostic questions seriously.

In the end, anyone could have predicted Len's patience snapping.

He thrust Joanna into Jim's arms, surprising them both silent. Jim cautiously adjusted Jo until he was holding her much the same way he'd held Kit in the forest. After a moment, he winced slightly, and shifted her so most of her weight was off Jim's left arm.

Joanna stuck one fist in her mouth, sighed mightily, and laid her head on Jim's shoulder.

Len grabbed the hem of Jim's shirt and jerked it upward. "A-ha," he crowed softly, palpitating the revealed bruise stretching across Jim's ribs and down almost to his hip. "Why didn't you just admit it? We could have gotten through this so much faster."

"Because he's an idiot," Kit said from the living room, followed by the sound of something thudding to the ground.

"Can we get this over with?" Jim asked. He hiked Jo a little further up his shoulder, letting her tuck her face into his neck while she settled in for a nap. Blue eyes flicked down to her. "Not that different from a werewolf pup, is she?"

"Know a lot of those?" Len asked, crossing to the large cabinet of herbs that took up most of the exam room's far wall. He shuffled through, throwing bits and pieces of different plants into a little bowl that he'd grabbed from a shelf on the way over.

"Way too many," Kit called.

"Dave has a lot of cousins," Jim said. "Lots of nieces and nephews. Werewolf runs in the family, I guess. And we're pretty cheap babysitters. Well, we were. Not a lot of time for it anymore."

Kit trotted into the room, something small and fluffy stuck on one whisker. "Not now that everyone thinks we're dead," she said, hopping up onto the table beside Jim. She snuffled carefully at the back of Jo's head, giving it a quick lick before curling up to clean her paws.

"Why is that, anyway?" Len asked. He set his bowl down on a sturdy surface and went to find his pestle along with some lavender and witch hazel oils. "What's all the secrecy about? The whole community still mourns your loss."

Jim shook his head. "I needed the community for leads when I was little. I don't anymore. Not since Tarsus."

Len picked up the bowl so he could look at Jim while he ground the herbs and oils into a fragrant paste. "What happened?" he asked.

"There was a monster," Jim said, looking at the floor between his feet. "It took a lot more…effort. To kill it. Than I was used to." His mouth pressed into a thin line. "More sacrifice."

"Must have taken an awful lot of power." Len scooped some of the paste onto his fingers, going over to spread it gently over Jim's bruises. "Maybe too much for a proper binding. Even one made by Sadie Doyle."

"I don't want to talk about it," Jim said.

"Kind of need to though," Kit told him.

Jim shook his head.

"What're you thinking?" Len asked, stepping back to consider his work. "There's nothing I can do?"

"There _isn't_ anything you can do," Jim said, moving to pull his shirt back down.

Len swatted at his hands. "Give it ten minutes to dry. I'll make more; you need to reapply every three hours for four days, then go outside and let the full moon shine on it."

Jim and Kit both stared at him. "Are you _actually_ a hedge witch?" Kit demanded.

Len took Jo with a shrug. "Never denied it. Pairs well with the official academic doctorin' I'm after. Let me put her down for a nap, but don't go anywhere." He leveled a stern look on Jim, then moved it down to Kit, who was more likely to cooperate. "I have some ideas."

He didn't expect them to still be there. Hoped, yes, but didn't expect.

Kit was sitting up now, biting the hem of Jim's shirt so he couldn't stand, her ears laid back against her skull while she growled.

Len put his hands on his hips and looked at her with deep admiration. "You're just a stubborn little cuss," he said proudly, "aren't you?"

"Yes," she said through the shirt.

"All right," Jim grumbled, tugging at his shirt. Kit continued to refuse to let go. "All _right!_ I get it, okay? I'm overruled. We'll see what he has to say."

Kit spit out the soggy material. "You just have to make things hard," she complained, turning her frustration into action by twisting around to groom her back fur.

Jim looked guilty. He reached over to stroke a hand down the twist of her spine. "Sorry," he murmured.

"What happens to me if you let this kill you?" she asked into the fluff of her tail.

Len's worry spiked when Jim didn't deny it, just looked even more guilty. He glanced up at Len. "We'll ask Bones," Jim said. "He'll have a good idea. My ribs are already feeling better; he must be good at this stuff. Maybe there's a plant or something for…" He gestured helplessly at his left eye. At the button that tied him to a dead monster. "Y'know. This."

Len grabbed a chair and dragged it over until he was close enough to watch discomfort flicker in Jim's face. He pulled a penlight from his pocket and shined it in first the pale, then the button eye. None of Jim's pupil was visible under the Beldam's curse. Len couldn't check it for responsivity the way he could the right.

It did react though.

The button gleamed, drawing the light into itself, consuming it until its black was more complete than the endless space between stars. Then it began to stretch out, not in any way Len could see, but on a level he could _feel,_ in all the place Grandmother had taught him to know. It reached for him, thin fingers of want, ravenous for the Other that lived inside every McCoy, back to the beginning. But Len's grandmother had taught him more than just how to heal.

She'd taught him to say _no,_ too.

Len pulled the pendant he wore concealed until his shirt up and over his head. "Shut your peepers," he said, distantly gratified when Jim obeyed. He pressed the pendant, and its centuries old protective spells, against Jim's trembling eyelid. His other hand wrapped firmly around the back of Jim's skull.

Below what any of them could hear, something screamed.

Jim jerked hard, shocked and already trying to get away again.

But Len was ready, and kept his hold on both the pendant and Jim's head firm.

Kit pressed close to Jim side, purring as hard as she could in comfort.

The screaming crescendoed, layering on top of itself until Jim was panting with the effort of keeping in a matching shriek of his own.

Len held on.

At last, the screaming broke, choked off by the relentless, quiet strength of the McCoy clan charm.

"Okay," Len said, releasing Jim at last, giving his patient enough room so he could gather Kit close to his chest, clutching her like a lifeline. "That should do for a first line of defense. But we'll need something better for day-to-day. She'll get used to that trick eventually. It'll be less effective every time. Best we get working on some way to cut her off entirely."

"What do you mean?" Jim rasped.

"You talk about her like she's still alive," Kit said.

Len shrugged apologetically. "Things like the Beldam don't die. She's not a species; she's a _category._ You cut her good, and it'd probably take a generation or two for her to pull herself back together in normal circumstances, or if you hadn't survived. But the button is a link that never broke. She set her mind to feed on you, and so she is. You're a smart kid; you've felt it by now."

Jim looked away when Kit turned her face up to him. "Jim," she said, a little brokenly. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"What could you have done?" he asked. "What could any of us do, if even Sadie's ward didn't work?"

"Well, that'd be because she didn't know what she was working against," Len said, sitting back in his chair. "No offence to her. Sadie's a legend. But she didn't know it was a button when she bound it, did she?"

"No," Kit agreed. "We were still in the Between behind her wall. She had to bind it to pull us through."

Len opened his mouth to ask more about that, then closed it with a sigh. Not the time. "Anyway." He shook one of Jim's knees to get his attention. "We don't want to bind it, kid. It can't be bound, not forever. We have to get protections set up to buy some time, then figure out how to break the link."

Jim touched his cheek just under the button eye. "I could get rid of it?" he asked wonderingly.

"Sorry, kid." Len's heart ached for the boy as his expression fell. "We can't back it up, but we can stop it getting worse. The parts of her already in you can't be cut out. What we _can_ do is stop the infection from consuming you. Make sense?"

A sigh shivered out of Jim. "Makes sense," he said. He tried on a smile without much success. "It's more hope than I had this morning."

"Is this why you've been so gung-ho about the monster hunting?" Kit demanded, standing up to plant her front paws on Jim's chest. "Are you trying to get yourself _killed?"_

"Before I become her?" Jim bowed his head. "I'd do anything to avoid that."

"Except ask for _help,_ apparently!"

"I'm sorry," Jim said helplessly. "I didn't know what to do. I'm sorry."

Len stroked a hand down Kit's back to try and calm her down. "Now, darlin'," he murmured to her. "It's okay. You know full well Jim's an idiot."

"Hey," Jim protested weakly.

They both ignored him.

"If I could figure it out in an hour," Len continued, "you've known about it for years."

"Practically since birth," she grumbled, letting Jim wrap her in a hug.

"You're so mean to me," he said into her fur.

Len and Kit both let him pretend he wasn't crying in relief.

"Now then." Len slapped his leg. "This is gonna take some trial and error. Bit of experimentin'. I'm not gonna do that while you're still healing, and the McCoy protection should hold up pretty good until then. Let me know if you notice anything getting worse." He hesitated, then looked down to address Kit, still snuggled to Jim's chest. "On second thought, _you_ tell me if anything gets worse. I'll get you my contact info. Do you have a PADD of your own, or do you use Jim's?"

"I'm an internet sensation," Kit purred. "I'll give you my most secure account."

"Wait," Jim said. "An internet _what?"_

"Good girl." Len pushed away from the table to stand with a stretch. "You kids staying for lunch? Jocelyn shouldn't be back for a few hours yet, so we don't gotta try and figure out an explanation. I'm fixin' to cook some comfort food. God knows we could use it."

"You don't want your wife to know?" Jim asked, glancing around at the herbs and witch tools and other signs of Other. "About me? Or about any of this?"

"Nah." Len shook his head. "She's about as mundane as they come. We were high school sweethearts, known each other even longer'n that. I tried to tell her more than a few times, but you know how some mundanes are. The bus they're on could run over a pair of walkin' talkin' skeletons and they still wouldn't notice." He smiled fondly. "She thinks all the herbs and such is a lot of hokum. Best not to stress her incredulity. You want some grilled cheese? It's an old family secret. I use three different types of cheese."

"Can't say no to cheese," Kit pointed out. "Much less _three kinds_ of cheese _."_

Jim stood, cradling her close. "We're in," he said. "Show us the way to the kitchen."

Len did his best to fatten them up in the single meal he had. He stuffed Jim full of gooey cheese and bread and butter until he looked close to falling asleep. "So," he said to wake the kid back up, pulling apart one of his sandwiches to watch the cheese stretch tantalizingly. "This is a weird time of year to find a teenager wandering the woods hunting monsters, even one you're your background. Where do y'all go to school?"

"We don't," Jim said, chewing sleepily on a piece of crust.

"Haven't in ages," Kit agreed from her spot curled up in the crook of Jim's right arm.

Len felt himself begin to swell with outrage. "Your guardians just _let you_ —"

Jim shook himself awake. "What? No. The Hendersons are great. Wait, what are you angry about?"

"You should be in _school!_ Monster hunter or not!"

"Oh that. Well, I was." Jim shrugged, popping another perfectly golden triangle of cheese bread into his mouth. "Then I finished, so I stopped."

Len frowned. "You finished?"

"High school," Kit confirmed. "Jim got way ahead before Tarsus, then used that to get into a program on Tarsus for advanced kids or something. Finished up most of what was left of high school in the first couple of months, then knocked the rest out in the hospital after."

"That's not possible," Len insisted.

"No?" Kit started washing her paws. "I guess you'd be the expert, then?"

Len deflated. "It's not usual for someone to be able to get through high school at your age," he told Jim. "I'm…surprised."

"Genius," Kit yawned.

Jim rolled his eyes. "Anyway," he said dismissively, "yeah, haven't done school in a while."

"You should work on some higher level stuff," Len said, leaning back in his chair. "There are some pretty easy intro ones you can do through my university. I could get it set up for you. Never know when you'll need higher learning," he explained when Jim looked doubtful. "Did you not like school?"

"Eh, school's fine. I mean." He bobbed his hand in a so-so gesture. "I like the learning. Some of the tests are a little, like. They feel arbitrary. I don't like the busywork."

"Who does?" Len chucked. "If you like learning, let me set you up with some stuff. You can poke at it if you want, and ignore it if you don't. We can keep loading up your PADD with optional courses until you get bored or graduate. C'mon," he cajoled when Jim seemed to hesitate. "What could it hurt?"

"Maybe I'll try," Jim hedged. " _Maybe."_

"Load it up with math and music and engineering and stuff," Kit said, still fastidiously cleaning her paws. "He like that kind of stuff."

"Give me your PADD," Len demanded. He spent the next half an hour dragging reluctant admissions from Jim about what he liked and didn't like, then handed the PADD back over. "There," he said, ushering them to the front door with a jar of the salve and a bag of brownies for the road, "I've done all I can to get you headed down the long road of blessed learning. You'll be prompted to officially register after three completed courses, but the form's not bad. Mostly for enrolment statistics. I'll release you back into the wild with a promise that you'll keep me updated on how you're feeling. And also maybe on your classes."

Jim made waffley sounds, but Kit immediately rattled off her main contact name and asked for Len's in return. "If he doesn't put use the bruise cream as ordered," she said from Jim's shoulder, ignoring his pissy expression, "I'll call to tattle."

"You would, too," Jim muttered.

"As for the classes," she added, "once he gets started with them, good luck shutting him up on anything interesting he learns."

"I hate you."

Kit kissed Jim's cheek with her whiskers. "Liar."

Len reached out to scratch under Kit's chin. "You are a good cat,"

"I know," she purred.

* * *

For a while, everything worked out pretty well. Jim healed, even while running over all and sundry fighting creatures and saving folks. He made sure to visit Len once a week to continue working on ways to sever the button's link. Failing that, they practiced techniques to maintain Jim's control of its dark encroachment.

He loved his classes, just like Kit had predicted, and often wrote long, rambling essays to Len about how the psychology and math and physics classes all overlapped. Len got the psychology, but the rest wasn't exactly his specialty. Interesting reads, though.

Five months into their friendship, while Len sat at a small table in the biggest library on campus, flicking through files on his PADD and trying to study, Kit called. Len felt a shiver of dread slide down his spine when he read her name in the display: Kit _never_ called. When she needed to tell tales on Jim, she did it via one of several messaging applications.

What could make her _call?_

"I don't know what to do," she said as soon as he accepted the call, breathless across the long distance. "He won't move. I can't get him to _move."_

Len threw himself out of his chair and toward the library's nearest exit. "Where are you?" he asked. She described as best she could, a warehouse somewhere in the lower part of town, long abandoned and falling apart. Len pulled on his jacket as he ran, weaving in and out of milling students on his way to the garage. It took him forty minutes to find them. As soon as he got out of the car, he grabbed his emergency med kit and broke into a sprint.

Jim was screaming.

"Good god," Len cursed, rushing through a gaping hole in one wall.

Kit met him barely a step inside the building. "We were fighting something," she said, rushing around his feet once before darting off into the growing shadows. "I don't know what it was. Jim seemed to, but he didn't think it was important. He didn't tell me. We were talking about surprising you after we wrapped up. But it wasn't _a_ thing, it was a _colony._ Jim couldn't keep track of them all, and the button got away from him. He's alive, but he won't get up, and he won't stop—"

"Screaming," Len said grimly, finally running out into the main part of the warehouse.

The whole area was ruined. Slime and bubbling ichor radiated outward from what looked like the crater of an explosion. Bits of the creatures, whatever they had been, were flung over broken boxes and other detritus. The ground looked scorched.

In the epicenter of the destruction, writhing on his back, voice broken with the force of his screams, was Jim.

Len dropped to his knees by the teen, doing a quick visual sweep to make sure the issue hadn't been compounded by an external wound. Once assured of Jim's physical state, he dug into his bag for his family's ancient emergency blanket woven thick with protections. He spread it over Jim with a practiced flick of his wrists. As soon as it settled, Jim's taut body collapsed to the ground. He panted like he'd run a marathon, face twisted in pain under a layer of sweat, cheeks fever red.

"What happened?" Kit demanded, pressed close in the curve of Jim's right shoulder. "What is that?"

"Heirloom," Len said distractedly. He laid a hand over Jim's eyes and turned his attention inward, trying to feel the ebb and flow of the kid's energies, seeking out the underlying issue.

The explosion was not metaphorical. Somehow, in fighting the creatures, Jim's firm grip on the Beldam's darkness slipped. It bled through all the layers of him now, eating his will from the inside, too wriggling and slick for him to gather it back up easily.

Luckily, Len had some tricks.

He turned back to his bag, digging through for a set of velvet sacks. Each one rattled and clicked as he sorted through for his goal: two small pieces of clear quartz, one turquois piece of fluorite, and one yellow citrine. He put one of the quartz on the center of Jim's chest, the other on his forehead. The fluorite and citrine he placed carefully on either side of his head, then went into bag.

"What are you doing?" Kit begged, tail lashing. "How will this _help?"_

"It'll sound really smarmy," Len warned her, eyes on his task as he sorted through his herb pouches for the plants Jim most needed. "That doesn't make it not true."

"I don't talk because I'm special," Kit said. "Other cats don't talk because people aren't usually interesting enough to talk to. That sounds fake too, right? But it's not. So just _tell me."_

Len nodded shortly. "We're all of the earth, if you go back far enough," he said. "If you know how it all works together, you can use crystals and other stones and petrified wood and all that to aid your body's natural abilities." He gestured dismissively. "It's not gonna turn you superhuman, or give you psychic abilities if you don't have them, but it'll give you a boost. Which, you can see, Jimmy kind of needs right now."

Kit flattened her ears in agreement. "So what are these?"

Len touched each stone as he talked about it, avoiding the quartz on Jim's chest as it slowly cracked and turned black. "Clear quartz cleans and activates energy centers, purifies you, physical, mental, spiritual, the whole shebang. I'll lose these to clearing out the Beldam's reach, if they do their job." He moved his finger to the pale teal stone, then the yellow. "Fluorine. Citrine. Both help mental clarity. Fluorine can also help with healing and protection against disease."

Kit looked up at him anxiously. "Does this count as disease?"

"Should." Len gestured toward Jim's pained expression. "It's not natural. That should count enough for the stones to do their work. I'm hoping this combination will help Jim focus and push back against the spread of the darkness, let him put it back behind a fence."

"A fence won't hold," Kit exclaimed.

Len's mouth went tight. He resumed digging through his bag. "I'm gonna make him a tea. He'll have to take it daily. Sometimes twice, when it's bad. Try to think of the button as a tumor. We'll get it smaller with continuous medication, then cut it out at its roots."

"He'll kill you if his hair falls out," Kit said, something hysterical under the words.

"That's not how tumor treatments work anymore," Len said. The quarts on Jim's heart cracked down the middle, then crumbled into dust. Len brushed it carefully into a heavily warded container, then replaced it with another piece.

An hour and seven more chunks of quartz later, Jim began stirring. Len scooped some of the paste he'd made out of rosemary, basil, ashwagandha, as well as other assorted focus and protection herbs onto one finger. He pried Jim's mouth open to smear it on the inside of his cheek. Jim licked it automatically, making a horrified face at the flavor.

"Big baby," Len complained. "Eat it, it's good for you." Once Jim seemed to have consumed most of it, Len set a hand on his sternum, to ground the teen as much as draw his focus. "This is important," Len murmured. Jim cracked his eyes open to look at him, one bright, the other dark as the deep ocean. "I know you're tired." Len patted his chest gently. "I know it hurts, kid. We can work on both of those later. Right now, you've got to concentrate. I gave you some tools to help, but you'll have to do the hard work yourself. Can you feel the button?"

Jim shut his eyes to look for the darkness that lived inside him. He inclined his head, enough to show agreement, not enough to knock the stones from his forehead.

"Good boy." Len gripped his shoulder. "You can feel how loose it is, can't you? It's gotten away from you. You need to pull it back. I bled off as much as I could, so it should be possible now."

Fear creased Jim's face. He tried to shake his head, then had to stop when the stones moved.

Len set them back in place. "I know it's hard. You still have to. If you don't want her to use you to get back into the world, you have to do your best to corral her again. Turn her into something you can use. A weapon, or a shield. It's stop-gap. But you need to do it, darlin'. There's no surviving if you don't."

Jim tried. He broke two more quartz crystals, trying hard to push out what was too much to handle, reaching for what he could. Len sang to him, soft and comforting, old words in an old language, a story of strength, a blessing for courage. Kit curled up against his neck, purring hard, lost without the ability to help her boy. And Jim fought, more stubborn at sixteen than most of Len's classmates put together.

Eventually, he won.

Sort of.

"I can't make it stop," he said, eyes still shut, unmoving on the ground. "Some of it is out and I can't get it back. But I can…can kind of. Push it out. I think—I'll be more visible to things that aren't human. More Other." His forehead went tight. "Soon I won't be anything _but_ Other. And something…something's different. I need…" His eyes snapped open, looking out into a distance no one else could see. "I need to go to California."

Len blinked. "…What?"

"I can see it. It's coming. For the boy. He's important. I have to help him."

"Is this like with Tarsus?" Kit demanded, finally uncurling from her hiding spot to stand on Jim's shoulder and look down into his face. "We barely survived last time!"

"Is _what_ like Tarsus?" Len demanded.

Kit made a frustrated noise. "Tarsus called to him. Or, well, the monster did. It wanted to do something so terrible, it resonated with the button. So we went to Tarsus to stop him."

"You _what?"_ Len nearly shrieked. "You _idiots!"_

"If it wants the boy," Jim rasped, "I can't let it have him. If it wants him that much, he has to be important. Later. I can't see why _now,_ it's for _later,_ and I have to—"

"Shit," Kit whispered. "The spillover. He's not just more visible to the Other, he's more open to it instead." She shook her head. "It'll be like Tarsus all the time."

Len sat back, thinking hard. "There are ways to increase psychic sensitivity," he said. "There have to be ways to dull it too. I've never heard of someone wanting to turn their sixth-sense _down,"_ he said with a frown. "But that doesn't mean no one ever has. I'll ask around."

"This isn't a third eye issue though," Kit pointed out.

"I'm a med student," Len grumbled, "not omnipotent. I have to do my best with the information at hand."

"And," Jim groaned, swiping the stones off his forehead before trying to sit up, "you have to pass your classes too. Don't try and come with us."

Len took the stones from Jim with a helpless shrug. "I know I can't. It's not that I don't want to help. I do. But I have obligations here, to Jo and Jos, to my school. I can't—"

"I just told you you shouldn't," Jim said waspishly, getting to his feet with all the wobbling and weakness of a newborn foal. "Don't worry about it."

"Promise me you'll came back to Mississippi if you get hurt." Len gripped Jim's arm as much to steady him as to hold him in place until he agreed. "Don't leave until I make you some teas, get together some stones, some runes and other things that'll help. Give yourself a few days, a week to feel better. Stronger. Don't be stubborn about this, Jim. Let me set you up to succeed."

Jim looked like he wanted to refuse on principal but lacked the strength.

"A few days won't hurt," Kit said, bumping her head against his ankle. "We can call Sadie, ask if she knows a way to hide us from things that might be looking. And we haven't spoken to Donna or Dave in ages, they'll want an update."

"Where will we stay?" Jim asked, bending with a strong wobble to pick her up.

Kit scoffed. "Are you kidding? After you nearly died killing these whatevers? We're having the client put us up in a fancy hotel."

"Yeah okay," Jim sighed, nuzzling his face into Kit's warm body. "Just for a few days though."

"A few days," Len agreed.

…

A week later, Jim finally tracked Len down on campus. "No more evasion," he snapped, mismatched blue eyes snapping with anger. He made enough of an unusual, compelling sight, slim and golden with a black cat draped across his shoulders, to draw more attention than was preferable. "You and Kit have plotted against me long enough. Give me what you wanted me to have or I'm going without it."

Kit twisted her head into Jim's cheek in the gesture meant to communicate an eye roll when she wasn't safe to actually roll her eyes.

"We got a solid week out of it," Len said mildly, hooking a hand around Jim's arm to tow him to a quieter place. "Y'all can't deny the results."

"Whatever," Jim huffed. "Just give me the–"

"You can't say what you want out loud without making us both look crazy," Len interrupted. "And anything you use as a stand-in will sound like I'm a _drug dealer._ Let's find someplace quiet."

"Eh." Jim tilted his head side to side, not in disagreement so much as indicating the potential for alternative conclusions. "I bet I could phrase it so you sound less like a drug dealer and more like a pimp, if that's easier."

Len squeezed Jim's arm warningly. "Somewhere _private,_ Jim."

Jim wiggled his eyebrows. "That's the spirit."

Len shoved him into the first empty classroom they came across. "You are a _brat,"_ he grumbled, setting his bag down on a desk to rummage through it. "Tea," he said, holding out a jar of leaves and berries and little flowers. Jim took it without word. Len heard him unscrew the top and take a cautious sniff.

"Smells good," he said, sounding surprised.

"I'm not going to give you something terrible," Len said, "you wouldn't drink it consistently."

"I could make him," Kit offered.

Len shook his head and straightened, three small velvet bags—blue, green, white—in his hands. "If you have to make him, it won't turn into a habit." He held each bag out, one at a time. "For focus. For healing. For protection. Sleep with them under your pillow whenever possible. If you're struggling, take the stones out of the bags and hold them in your hands. You can do it with all of them, or just whichever you think you need most at that time." He set two of the bags into Jim's outstretched hand and opened the third to wiggle a small tag out of it. "Each bag has a description of what stones are inside." He flipped the tag open to show the neat lines of writing inside. "When the stones break—and they will, you draw on them hard—go to any gem shop and replace. Bury the stone fragments; the earth will clean all that up. If you toss 'em in the trash, we're gonna end up with Beldam-powered rats or some other godforsaken monstrosity. Get it?"

Jim nodded. "Got it."

"Good." Len eyed him like he didn't believe him but couldn't figure out a polite way to say as much. He put the tag away and gave Jim the last bag. "Think you can help him keep the stones straight?" he asked Kit.

She flicked her tail. "Don't even insult me with questions like that, I've been managing Jim since he was ten."

Jim made a face but didn't protest.

Len crossed his arms. "When are you leaving?"

"Now." Jim tucked the stones and tea into his ever-present satchel. "We only stopped by to pick this stuff up."

"Sentimental," Len drawled. "You shouldn't have."

" _I_ came to say goodbye," Kit said, walking forward to butt her head into Len's hip where it leaned against the desk.

Len pet a hand down her spine. "At least _someone_ has some manners."

"Sorry," Jim said, rolling his eyes. He scooped Kit up. "It's not exactly goodbye though, is it? We'll see you again."

"For a visit," Len threatened, eyes narrowed. "I've about had my fill of having to save your scrawny ass." He snapped. "Speak of! Give me your PADD."

Jim wouldn't until Kit bit his ear.

Len loaded a series of programs onto the unit. "Diet, nutrition, weight recovery," he rattled off. "There." He passed the device back. "Now your PADD will track your progress and send me periodic updates. If you go back to eatin' like a bird, _I'll. know._ And I'll _find you._ "

"Spoken like a true mother hen," Jim sighed. "I'll be fine, Bones. You taught Kit to be as paranoid as you are about what I'm eating."

"More," she said smugly, flicking her tail under Jim's nose to make him sneeze.

It occurred to Len that he didn't want them to go. They had to: Jim's nightmares and the pull to California were getting worse. If he didn't follow it, he could go mad.

But Len wanted them to stay. They were safe with him in Mississippi. Bad things would find them here, sure. Bad things would always be drawn to Jim, and Jim to them, as long as the button connected him back to the Beldam. If he was in Mississippi, Len could fix him. Put him back together.

"We need to go," Jim said, soft and kind, as though he could hear Len's twisting regrets.

"I know," Len sighed, trying to shake off his melancholy and generalized feeling of doom. He cleared his throat. "I have lab in about ten minutes anyway. I won't make you promise to be safe—neither one of us would believe it." He ducked his head to catch Jim's eye. "Promise you'll try, though?"

Jim pursed his lips, then nodded.

"Good boy. Now, g'wan. Get out of here." He attempted a smile. "I'll see y'all soon, okay?"

"Okay," Jim agreed, smile faint but genuine. He resettled his bag and nodded again, just once but firmly. "Okay. We're going."

Len wanted to add a hundred different entreaties for Jim to take care of himself, but it wouldn't help. So instead he hugged Jim, rough and surprising, and left before Jim could comment.

He didn't see Jim for another eight months.

* * *

The teenagers fell sideways into Len's study mid-argument. One of them, flushed and bloody from a cut in his forehead, had a freakin' _sword._

The other one was Jim.

They started wrestling on the floor almost as soon as they landed on it from the portal that spat them out about a foot and a half up.

"What the hell," Len said, awake enough to be annoyed but lacking the coffee—or booze—to really work up a proper rage. He planted his foot on Jim and pushed, forcing the two apart. "You're damned lucky Joss took Jo to her grandparents' for the weekend while I'm doing exams," Len grumbled. "Break it up or I'll break your heads!"

They scrambled apart, Jim wedged against the cabinets, the stranger staggering to his feet by the windows.

"Send me back," the unknown teenager said. He brandished his sword, a slim, elegant rapier. "Send me back right now, or I'll gut you!"

"Good fucking luck," Jim growled, shadow stretching under him to creep against the light toward the boy.

Len yanked open one of his herb drawers to throw a handful of sage at Jim. "Knock it off!"

Jim blinked hard, shaking his head both to get the dry herbs out of it and to clear his rage. His shadow wavered, then shrank, pulling back into him when he shut his eyes to concentrate on it. "Sorry," he said, accepting Len's hand up when it was offered.

"Where's Kit?" Len asked, patting Jim down to look for her.

"Not here," Jim said tightly. He took a deep breath.

Before he could explain, the other kid interrupted. "Is that the cat?" he demanded. "It got in the way. I was _trying_ to defeat a _monster,_ then this idiot—" He flicked a hand at Jim.

"Wouldn't finish that, if I were you," Len said as mildly as he could. "This _idiot_ killed a Beldam at ten, with the help of the cat. Don't push."

"I can defend myself," Jim said with a sour expression, trying to shake off Len's tricorder when he got it out but submitting when his squirming didn't help. "Where'd you get that?" he asked sulkily.

"School," Len replied, turning the tricorder on the other kid, who held still like he was used to it.

Odd.

"And who're you?" Len prompted while checking the readouts for both potential patients. "Why were you tangling with a monster in the first place?"

"I'm Sulu," the kid said. "I didn't tangle with a monster. _It_ had a problem with _me._ And _bullshit,_ nobody kills a _Beldam_."

Len rolled his eyes, going over to his cabinet of ever-growing medical supplies. He started to sort through for the right hypos to heal the assorted injuries and vitamin deficiencies and exhaustion and stress markers and such. "Believe what you will. At least your disbelief means you're part of the community." He went to Jim first, driving three hypos into his neck in rapid succession. "More on that later, though. _Where is Kit?"_

Jim swallowed hard. "The monster got her. I think it's a siren, maybe driven off from its colony, definitely crazy. She's been luring people in and drowning them in a really populated area." He inclined his head toward Sulu, who was holding still for Len's treatment. "He was hunting it down, but he didn't get it right. Kit acted as distraction so we could get away and regroup, even though I told her not to. The siren caught her. I don't think she's hurt, I think the siren likes her snark. But we've got to get back and finish this before that welcome wears out."

"How did y'all manage to get here through a _portal?"_ Len asked, stepping back to lean against his desk with his arms crossed.

"Some guys owed me a favor one time," Jim said evasively, refusing to make eye contact. "I've been carrying it around for a while. It'll get us back, too, once we're ready. But first we need your help."

Len raised one eyebrow. "First I need some _answers."_ He pointed at Sulu. "What in the hell were you doing going after a siren alone? Also, you're a suspiciously good patient. You get in a lot of scrapes?"

Sulu hesitated, looking between Len and Jim, then sighed deeply. He sheathed his sword. "That's all related, actually," he admitted. "As for being a good patient, I got sick a lot as a kid. If I fought my doctors, my mother would let me have it pretty thoroughly. There's a lot of stuff you can take away from a sick kid to make his life miserable." He shrugged. "Guess the habit stuck.

"The monster hunting is my grandma's fault. She used to sit with me nearly every day, telling me all kinds of stories, mostly about either folklore or space travel. She's from Japan, but she spent most of her life in Starfleet. Made for a weird combination of interests. Once I got stronger, I went out looking for the things she described. I found them, and they hit hard. So my grandma taught me how to fence to protect myself. I've been hunting them ever since.

Jim nodded thoughtfully. "That explains why they wanted you dead so bad."

" _He's_ who you went for?" Len demanded.

"What?" Sulu asked, looking confused.

"Active hunters don't usually last long," Jim said with a nod for Len. "Too much bad karma." He shot Sulu a frown. "You might try _negotiating_ once and a while."

Sulu made a disgusted sound. "Who would negotiate with _monsters?"_

Jim and Len both raised their hands. "Not everything dark is evil," Jim said. "You're right about this siren, she needs to be dealt with. But how are you going to do that with a regular blade? We need to soup up your sword, then go find her original colony. Once they agree that we can take her out, we can get them to give us a charm to find her, and finish this."

"Is that why we're here?" Sulu asked, looking around again. "To do something to my sword?"

"Oh no," Len said, putting up his hands. "Whatever it is, Jim, _no_. I have tests! A _lot_ of tests!"

"We just need a couple of runes," Jim protested. "How long could it possibly take to etch them in the sword? Then you can go back to your work! We'll leave you alone for ages, promise."

"Your promises mean nothing to me," he grumbled.

Jim sucked in a sharp breath. "Please," he said softly, two-tone eyes desperate. "To save Kit."

Len deflated. "To save Kit," he agreed. "All right. What do you need?"

What they needed were runes to protect against the siren's magic so Sulu could get close enough to fight. Jim was mostly immune, due to the button, but he wasn't skilled enough at weapons to stand up against a centuries-old creature who couldn't be talked out of fighting and wouldn't be vulnerable to an ambush. Jim also wanted sigils to strengthen the weapon, keep it ever-sharp, resist against breaking, all sorts of things. By the end, the symbols stretched from hilt to tip, gleaming faintly in darkness, shining straight through one side of the sword to the other.

"Whoa," Sulu breathed, turning his blade in the light to watch it glow.

"See?" Jim judged him in the side with an elbow. "I know what I'm talking about. Well." He cocked his head thoughtfully, then shrugged. "Eh. Most of the time."

Sulu grinned at him, wide and excited, before carefully sheathing the sword. "Listen," he said to Jim, so seriously Len and Jim both raised their eyebrows. "If it's true that you killed a Beldam, and it's true that your eye is a button, then you should be able to use what's left of her power. You don't need me for this. You don't need _anyone._ Why not just, I don't know, let your power consume the siren?"

Len turned to watch Jim as he answered, cataloging the stress in his shoulders, the anxiety and rage in his clenched fists.

Maybe he'd make Jim a new emotions bag. Something calming. Blue lace agate for sure, Lepidolite, jet stones...

"I don't think of the button as a weapon," Jim said, voice low and dark for so young a man. "I made a mistake by letting her do this to me." He jerked a hand up to indicate his left eye. "I'll spend the rest of my life making up for it. Most of that will be me trying to keep her power contained. If I let it out every time I _could,_ it'd take me over. Burn me out." The long muscle in his jaw clenched. "She'd wear me like a suit. Worse, she'd be out in this world, and there's not a lot that could stop her after that. So yes." He crossed his arms under a bitter expression. "I _could_ do this alone, if that's how I wanted the world to end. But it's not." Jim's arms lifted and fell in an encompassing gesture. "Here we are. Also," he added, pointing at Sulu, "you worked really hard for this for a really long time. You have first dibs on turning the siren into a corpse. We just gotta make sure we do it the right way."

Sulu nodded, something like respect glinting in his eyes. "Seems fair," he said.

"Okay." Jim clapped once and rubbed his hands together. "Are we ready?"

"Hey, whoa, wait, no I don't think so," Len interrupted when Sulu stepped forward in agreement. He snagged Sulu by the sleeve and made "I'm watching you" fingers at Jim. "Stay," he ordered before adding, "Come with me," to Sulu.

"I don't think I like," Jim managed to say before the door closed in his face.

Len stood in the hallway with Sulu, trying to look as intimidating as he could. "Jim's got something of a reckless streak," he said, "and if you're gonna be with him, you've gotta be on the lookout for it."

Sulu raised his hands defensively. "I didn't sign on to be a babysitter."

"No one ever does," Len growled. "But he's gonna be in the thick of it with you, and I don't assume you want his _grizzly death achieved for the sake of your survival_ on your conscious, do you?"

"But," Sulu protested, tapering off quickly under the heat of Len's glare.

" _Do. You."_

"No," Sulu said weakly. He cleared his throat and straightened out of his slight cower. "But I'm also not responsible for him. I'm not an adult yet, so he's got to be responsible for _himself."_

"He _won't be,"_ Len said, throwing his hands in the air. "I've set him up as good as I can, but I'm in _school,_ I have a _wife and daughter,_ I can't be galavanting all over eternity after him, making sure he eats right and tends to his wound."

"Neither can I," Sulu stressed. "Okay, okay," he added when Len drew in a deep breath to yell some more, " _maybe_ I can watch his back while we're together. _Only_ when we're together," he stressed. "I don't plan on following him _all over eternity._ For one thing, I have a family too. For another, I'm not going to hunt monsters my whole life." He dug his PADD out of a cargo pocket on his pants. "Give me your information, I'll let you know how Jim's doing. _While we're together."_

"Good." Len took the PADD and quickly added his details. "What're your goals?" he asked absently as he typed.

"Starfleet." Sulu looked bashful when Len glanced up at him in surprise. The teenager shrugged. "My grandmother told me her space stories too, remember? I thought it was my duty to protect San Fran while I lived there, but I don't plan on living there forever. I'm going to explore new worlds, find _new_ monsters to protect people from."

Len made a thoughtful sound. "Well how about that." New ideas started to blossom in him mind. "That might be the perfect solution."

Sulu frowned. "To what?"

"Nothing." Len waved him off, handing his PADD back. "Never mind, it's not even about you. Thanks for agreeing to help."

"Like it was much of a choice," Sulu muttered.

Len ignored him and pulled the door back open.

On the other side, Jim looked as puffed up and mean as Kit on her worst days. "I don't know what you think you're—"

"Ready when you are," Sulu said with a wild smile.

Jim hesitated, clearly wanted to continue to yell at Len but also eager to get back to the siren. "Okay," he said reluctantly. One finger jabbed at Len. "But we're not done with this! Once I get Kit back, I'm calling you to figure out what you said to Sulu!"

"Y'all take care now," Len said, smile sweet as honeysuckles.

Jim flicked him off, then pulled a small bean out of his pocket to throw it at the far wall. At the point where it hit, reality caved inward, making a tunnel straight from where they were to where they'd been.

"Stay safe," Len threatened over the roar of wind and displaced space.

"I'll have Kit message you," Jim called back.

Sulu nodded firmly at Len's demanding stare.

The teenagers shared an excited look and leapt through.

"I've got to ward this place better," Len said wearily.

* * *

 **Kit Henderson**

 _Rescue done!_

 **Leonard McCoy**

 _That took three weeks!_

 _I thought you were all dead!_

 **Kit Henderson**

 _Okay so technically the rescue was_

 _done a while ago and we got a little_

 _distracted. But we're all safe! Sulu_

 _handles his sake better than Jim,_

 _but not as great as Grandma Sulu._

 **Leonard McCoy**

 _YOU LITTLE SHITS_

 **Leonard McCoy**

 _Wait is his LAST name Sulu?_

 **Kit Henderson**

 _Yeah his grandma won't let him tell_

 _us his first name. Names have power,_

 _and all that._

 **Kit Henderson**

 _Anyway we're all safe, the siren is dead,_

 _her old colony gave each of us a boon_

 _for taking her out, Jim thinks he's dreaming_

 _about a nest of some bad shit in Seattle, so_

 _we're headed there next. Sulu's switched to_

 _distance education so he can come too,_

 _because the boon is really helpful and he wants_

 _more stuff like that in his 'just in case' folder._

 _New friend!_

 **Leonard McCoy**

 _That's a little mercenary_

 _of him. At least you have_

 _a partner in trying to make_

 _Jim behave._

 **Kit Henderson**

 _If that's how you thought this partnership_

 _was going to go, you were_ _ **wrong.**_

Her next message was a picture of Jim and Sulu leaping off a cliff edge onto the back of an enraged siren, Sulu with his sword brandished high, Jim with the fingers of his forward hand tipped in clawed shadows.

"God _damn_ it!" Len shouted.

The librarian threw a stylus at his head.

"Sorry," he muttered, slouching in his seat. Once settled, he backed out of the image to compose his next message.

 **Leonard McCoy**

 _THAT LITTLE SHIT_

 **Leonard McCoy**

 _You tell that enabler I'm_

 _COMING FOR HIM_

 **Jim Henderson**

 _good luck getting away from school_

 _long enough to find us in Seattle!_

 **Leonard McCoy**

 _DAMN IT JIM_

 **Jim Henderson**

 _;)_

* * *

Kit continued to send him periodic images and updates. Occasionally Jim would chime in to annoy him, or Sulu—who had apparently decided to hop on the crazy train after all—to ask advice on fixing this or that injury. Len got really practiced at talking someone else through a medical procedure.

His entire second year of med school slipped away like that.

A few months before the start of his third year, break already made busy with volunteer rotations at the university's Medical Center, Kit called.

Len answered the call with a worried hiss. "Let me sit down," he said before Kit could drop whatever bomb she had. It took him less than a minute to shove his groceries in the fridge, bags and all, and sequester himself in his office. "Okay," he said, taking a seat at his desk and bracing his free hand against the edge. "What happened?"

"I broke my PADD," Jim said. "So I'm borrowing Kit's."

"God _damn_ it, Jim!" Len pressed his hand against his thundering heart. "I thought you'd killed your damned fool self _again!"_

"Hey," Jim said, sounding offended. "I've never _actually_ gottenmyself killed."

"Not for lack of trying," Kit and Sulu chorused in the background.

"No shit from the peanut gallery, this is _serious,"_ Jim grumbled. "Bones, what do you know about vampires?"

Len looked at his communicator like it was malfunctioning. When he was sure he'd actually heard Jim, correctly, he shook his head incredulously. "Isn't your adopted _mom_ a vampire? A _big-wig_ vampire? And by that I mean, one of the _most power vampires_ on the _face of the god damned Earth?_ What under all the stars in the sky could I possibly know that she doesn't?"

"Your mom's a what?" Sulu asked, surprise in his voice. "Wait, what did you say your last name was?"

"What did you say your _first_ was," Jim countered smugly. His voice got closer when he turned back to the communicator. "Listen, Bones—"

"Len."

"Eh. Listen, they're making it hard to concentrate, let's take this somewhere a little more private."

"You are going to make me sound awfully suspicious," Len said, trying to fight his grin, "havin' jailbait talk to me like that."

"Technically," Jim said around the sound of a door closing, "I'm not jailbait anymore. Just turned eighteen, remember?"

"Not the point," Len sighed. "Now, spit it out. Why do you need to talk to me and not Donna Henderson?"

"…Well." Jim cleared his throat. "See, the problem is, there are treaties."

Len narrowed his eyes. "Treaties?"

"Yes. Between Donna and…other places. She stays in New York because she doesn't like to travel, which is due at least in part to her being really powerful. If she travels freely, she has to, like, submit itineraries and sign a bunch of forms promising not to take over the assorted covens and etcetera. Then if she deviates from any of that, there are international conflicts and it's all just a mess. So I don't want to get her involved because she'll want to come here and that…wouldn't work out so great with my timeline. Plus even if she doesn't come, the local covens might think she's, like, _involved._ Which she isn't! It's important to remember she _isn't._ Involved. No international incidents here!"

"Jim," Len said, as calmly as he could. "Where are you?"

"…Somewhere in Russia, I think?"

Len cursing was long and varied. Occasionally he could hear Jim sharing highlights of it with his stooges, also in _Russia_ with him. They all made impressed noises, commenting on how they should write it down to memorize and use later.

"Did you learn all this in med school?" Jim asked when Len finally managed to bring himself back from the edge.

"I have a rotation at the center in _half an hour,_ Jim!" Len exploded. "I do not have the time for _international vampire politics!"_

"Luckily," Jim said, "that's not what I need you for. We're not gonna _stay_ in Russia, Bones. We just need to figure out the best way to get home with a maybe abandoned, maybe rogue vampire in tow."

Len pinched the bridge of his nose. "I'm going to go gray, Jim," he said. "I'm not even thirty, I'm going to lose all the color in my hair because of _nonsense_ and _shenanigans—"_

"That's fair," Jim interrupted. "I'm sure you're building up to another educational and interesting and tempered rant, but, Bones, we don't have a lot of _time_ here. Can you help or not?"

After about half a minute of breathing exercises and fiddling with some blue lace agate, Len sighed out all the air from his lungs. "Okay, Jim," he said. "What's the problem?"

Following Jim's dreams and a pull he hadn't felt since Sulu, they found a vampire, young in every sense of the word. He'd been bitten by a crazy, powerful rogue, which Jim had taken apart en route to finding the boy's hideout. It took them nearly a full day to talk the fledgling vampire out of the little cave where he was waiting to starve to death, and then another hour to get him sufficiently knocked out so he wouldn't drain Sulu dry. They used some local connections to get enough donated blood to pull him back from the edge.

The boy's name was Pavel Chekov. Once Jim had his name, he used an old ritual of Sadie's to bind the boy to himself, subduing both his powers and his hunger until they could find a safe place for him. Pavel had submitted an application to join Starfleet Academy, and he was enough of a genius to make that his acceptance was all but guaranteed. Jim's initial plan had been to escort him there and release him into the wild.

Until they'd discovered the snag.

"You _bound him?"_ Len shouted, leaping out of his chair in outrage. "How deeply?"

Jim's fidgeting was audible through the call. "Uh…I wouldn't necessary call it _deep_ so much as _thorough?"_

"Damn it, Jim!"

"Well, I'm sorry! I didn't _mean_ to make him a thrall. Or, like, nearly a thrall. Thrall-ish? Whatever he is, I didn't mean to! Tell me how to undo it and I will."

"I can't just _tell you,"_ Len groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose again as he slumped back into his seat and started a mental tally of all the things he'd need to buy. "You'll have to come here."

"…You're sure?"

"Or to Donna," he sneered.

Jim drew in a sharp breath that he exhaled in slow defeat. "Okay," he said, weariness transforming to determination in the space of a single word. "This is gonna be tricky, but we're up to it. We'll be there soon."

"Be where?" Sulu called out.

"Give me a sec," Jim shouted back. "See you soon, Bones," he said, hanging up before Len could protest, "That's not my name."

Figured.

…

Two weeks later, they arrived. Jim's whole batfuck crazy posse.

Plus one.

Pavel was _adorable._ He looked maybe fourteen, hair a riot of untidy curls, face sweet and nervous. Len resisted the urge to stuff him with grits and bundle him in all the McCoy family's fluffiest blankets.

Instead, he whacked Jim on the back of the head, stabbed Jim and Sulu each with a nutrients hypo, pet Kit nose to tail, and held out his hand. "Len McCoy," he introduced himself, waiting patiently for the new vampire to accept the greeting.

"Chekov," the child murmured, accent thick, grip strong and cold. "Pavel Andreievich. It is, ah. Good to meet you?"

"Wish it were under better circumstances," Len said, releasing Pavel's hand to scrub at his own two-day scruff. He stabbed an accusing finger at Jim. "I have _work,_ y'know."

Jim shrugged. "When don't you?"

"Never," Kit told Pavel and Sulu. "The answer is _never._ He _always_ has work."

"It's a miserable existence," Jim agreed.

"From what I hear," Len said to Pavel, beckoning him forward into his office, "your goal is to be in a world of hard work yourself. Starfleet, huh?"

"Oh yes." Pavel's enthusiastic nods set his curls tumbling across his forehead. "I have wanted to be in Starfleet for years." He took the seat Len indicated without question. "For practically my whole life! I would like very much to explore the stars. Can you imagine?" His expression went dreamy with excitement. "All those unexplored worlds and peoples!"

"I can imagine, all right." Len shuddered. "All those explosions and diseases and _death."_ He started rummaging through his drawers for the appropriate diagnostic tools. "You wouldn't catch me alive on one of those flying rust buckets. Only a battered hull between me and the cold, crushing vacuum of space? No thank you. Hold still," he added almost belatedly, stabbing a hypo into Pavel's neck to get a sample of blood.

The reaction was instantaneous.

Pavel went _berserk._ His fangs dropped, nearly tearing through his own lips, while his thrall lashed out in a nearly physical psychic attack. Len fell backwards, would have crashed to the floor if Jim hadn't caught him first. Kit leapt up to the top of the highest shelf, an observer too remote to reach.

"Stop," Jim said. Not sharp or angry or afraid, not surprised, not upset. A simple, firm command.

Pavel froze mid-lunge, lips pulled back in a snarl, eyes solid black.

"Tell me who you are," Jim ordered.

"Pavel Chekov," the boy snarled.

"Tell me how you feel."

"Hungry," he hissed.

"Tell me how you want to feel."

At last Pavel struggled, pulling his arms in and straightening. "Like myself," he whispered, eyes sliding shut. "Not like a monster. Like Pavel Chekov."

Jim steadied Len and pushed the older man behind him. "Feel like yourself," he said. "Like Pavel."

The vampire seemed to shrink in on himself. His hands inched up to cover his face in something like grief. "I am still," he gasped, just on the edge of a sob, "hungry."

"I can," Len began.

"I will stay with you," Jim said, still an order. "You will wait with me. Len and Sulu are leaving the room. You will not think of them while they are gone."

Pavel sunk down into his chair, head nodding once.

Jim nudged Len toward the door, not taking his eyes off Pavel.

Len dragged Sulu into the kitchen and pulled an old-fashioned emergency transfusion kit out from under the sink.

Sulu looked confused. "Why do you have—"

"Not important." Len set himself up with the machine. "I'm donating blood to help Pavel." He looked up at Sulu with the shade of a glare. "Are you helping or not?"

Instead of answering, Sulu rolled his sleeve up.

Within ten minutes, they had a hearty meal for a baby vampire.

Len put the first serving in a cup that had a lid and a straw and passed it through a crack in the door to Jim. He and Sulu pressed their ears to the door to try and eavesdrop on the fallout. There were murmured voices, low at first then louder in relief. The straw made a slurping sound, and Pavel's accompanying whine could probably have been heard from the street.

"Not all at once," Len called through, then cracked the door to slide a sealed pitcher of the rest of their blood inside.

Jim appeared to pick up the pitcher, face pinched around a tight smile. "Give me your cup," he said to Pavel, closing the door behind him.

After a few minutes, the door opened again. Jim ushered them back inside. "Sorry about that," he said.

"It's pretty common with new vampires," Len said, leaning Sulu in toward his desk. "Especially if he lost his sire. You gonna be okay if I give us some blood replenishers?" He asked Pavel.

The kid looked humiliated, curled in on himself where he stood in the far corner, still sipping from his cup. "I am much better now," he said softly.

Jim pulled himself up to sit on the far counter. "This was my fault," he told the others. "I'm the most familiar with vampires, and I didn't keep Pavel properly fed. I'll do better."

"I cannot go to Starfleet like this," Pavel said, voice breaking on the final word. "I am a danger to everyone." His expression firmed. "One of you must—"

Jim threw a balled up piece of paper at him. "Don't even finish that thought," he threatened, though not in the tone he'd used earlier to command Pavel's obedience. "Nobody's gonna kill you. We'll figure this out, and you'll go to Starfleet, and maybe Sulu will finally finish his enrollment too, and you can both travel the stars and whatnot, explore new worlds, et cetera."

Kit leapt down from her observation post, walking confidently along the counter toward Pavel. "I didn't take you for a coward," she said, flicking one ear back toward Jim. "You were fighting when we found you. Now you're gonna give up? On life? On your dream? On the work Jim and Sulu and Bones have put into you?"

Pavel shook his head, reaching out a trembling hand to pet Kit when she got close enough. "I want to see the stars," he whispered hoarsely. "If it were up to me, I'd be on my way to the Academy. But what can I do, Kit? What can anyone do against this hunger?"

"If Donna can do it," Kit said with a solid bump of her head against Pavel's knuckles, "you can too."

"I do not even know a Donna," Pavel objected. He began scratching under Kit's chin.

"She's the head of most of this half of the world," Len said.

Jim made a sound of objection. "Eh. She doesn't really rule it though? She's really hands-off these last few centuries."

Sulu threw his hands in the air. "That doesn't make her _not the most power vampire on Earth_ though."

"The most powerful vampire on Earth?" Pavel squeaked.

"She's not that scary," Kit said.

"Unless you mess with her family," Jim added in the interest of honesty.

"Which, ta-da." Sulu made jazz hands in Jim and Kit's direction. "Two of her family, right here."

Pavel began to look a little panicked. "What?"

"You didn't recognize the last name?" Len asked, rooting through his cabinets for a vampire self-control kit. "Henderson is pretty well-known in the community."

"Jim did not tell me his last name," Pavel shrilled. "And I do not know of any community! I did not know of any _vampires_ until the one that bit me!"

"Wampires," Sulu echoed under his breath, hiding his grin behind a hand.

"Now is not the time!' Pavel wailed.

Len held up both hands. "Now, everybody, just calm down. I didn't know you were new to the whole _magic and cryptids are real_ thing as well as vampiring," he said to Pavel. "That was my mistake. Assumptions aren't any better for a doctor than a hedge witch. I'll be more careful goin' forward, okay?"

"…Hedge witch?" Pavel asked, a little tearfully. Jim refilled his cup and encouraged Pavel to drink.

"It'll steady your nerves," he insisted. "I've got a whole crash course planned for him," he added to Len. "It'll take a few months to get him totally up to speed, but that's probably about as long as it'll take to learn to eat right and control the blood lust."

"He needs to get his thrall sorted too," Sulu pointed out. "If he can't dazzle, he won't be able to get compliance for feeding."

"We'll use you for practice," Kit teased, showing all her pointy teeth in a grin.

Sulu rolled his eyes but didn't object.

"I will miss my first semester," Pavel said, sipping sadly at his blood.

"Deferred," Jim insisted. "Speaking of." He smiled blindingly at Len. "We set it up to have his mail rerouted to here. Hope you don't mind."

"It's a little late to be worrying about that," Len grumbled. "Jos'll _love_ having random stranger's mail sent here."

"Oh good," Jim said blithely. "Now let's focus on the real issue at hand here: breaking my accidentally too strong binding on poor Pavel so we can set him up to be read for campus by next semester."

Pavel sighed deeply around his straw.

"Thing is," Len said, handing Pavel the bag of assorted herbs and stones that he could use as a focus point, "I'm not sure we _can_ break it."

"What!" all four of the children cried.

Len held up his hands defensively. "Hey, don't shoot the messenger! Listen, it looks and sounds to be like you didn't really bind Pavel in the first place. Or, if you did, it got a little mixed up along the way." He gestured at Pavel's corner where he was doing his very best impression of a wilted flower. "The way he reacts to you isn't the way a bound person does. He obeys without struggle. If he were bound, he'd be able to push back verbally, if not physically. But there's _no_ resistance. Y'ask me, that's more like—"

"A sire," Sulu breathed, eyes wide.

"Bingo." Len crossed his arms, eyebrow arched in challenge. "You did a silly thing with good intentions, and now you're linked. You want to be unlinked? Pavel's got to do it, the same way any struggling baby vampire would."

"He's got to grow up enough to throw me off," Jim groaned. He dragged a hand down his face. "He's got to _want_ me to leave."

"But I do not," Pavel said hesitantly. "You and Sulu and Kit are all I have in life now." He squinted. "…In afterlife? How could I want you gone?"

"It usually takes years for a young vampire to grow up enough for that."

Pavel's face went sad and tragic again. "I will never grow up," he said with a slight chin wobble. "Now it seems I will always be like this. Fourteen. _Forever."_

"Not quite," Len corrected him. "As long as Jim is your sire, or functions the same way, he can will you to keep growing. Once you split off on your own, you won't have the control over yourself that he does, and at that point you'll be set in time."

"In that case, I must not outgrow Jim." He turned shining eyes on his stand-in sire. "I must keep you with me until I am properly grown in all sense of the word. Will you let me do this?"

"What?" Jim exclaimed. "But I—You were gonna go to Starfleet! I have no intention of enrolling, and how could I stay close enough otherwise? How old exactly do you want to _be?"_

"Eighteen would be enough." Pavel stepped a little closer, hope bright in his face. "Please, Jim, it is only four years. Three and a bit!"

"Huh," Sulu said.

Jim whirled on him. "What!"

He shrugged. "Nothing. It just occurred to me that Pavel would graduate pretty much around the same time he hit eighteen. If he's gonna be in the Academy all that time, there's a pretty easy way to stay with him."

"No." Jim stabbed a finger at each of them in turn. "No, no. _No."_

"Aw, but Jim." Kit's expression was wicked. "Don't you remember my long-lost dream of being the first cat to graduate Starfleet?"

"I don't want to be a Starfleet brat!

"Well you oughta left his _actual_ sire alive then, should you?" Len gestured at Pavel. "You meant well in rescuing him, but that rescue isn't even half done. You followed your dreams to him, so follow it through."

Jim made a sound like broken glass in a blender. He strode from the room, pacing back and forth in front of the door.

"I'm impressed," Sulu muttered to Pavel. "I thought for sure you'd fold when he started to get mad."

"I have had a shit month," Pavel replied, sipping serenely at his cup. "I will not let my salvation from it go. Besides, Jim is very smart, I think. Too smart for monster hunting his whole life. He will come into Starfleet with me, and maybe you as well, and we will shake them to their foundations."

"You are a surprise a minute," Sulu laughed. "Let's do it."

Finally, Jim stalked back into the room. "Fine," he spat. Then he took a deep breath and turned to Pavel. "Fine," he said again, resolved and calm like the dark of the sea. "I'll do it. Or, I'll _try._ I haven't attended regular school in basically ever. It'll take a while to put together an application."

Pavel went over to Jim to rummage excitedly through his satchel for Kit's PADD. "Do not worry," he said, flicking through the screens show Jim the results. "Kit and Sulu and I, we have been working on this since the beginning. It needs only your approval. If you look through it over lunch, we can submit it before dinner! I am quite confident you will be accepted same as I." He beamed at Sulu. "Same as all of us."

Jim turned with slow, fatalistic intent to settle his murderous gaze on Kit. "You _planned_ this?'

Kit began washing one of her back feet, spreading the toes so Jim could see each and every claw.

"We hoped it would work out this way," Sulu said with a shrug. "There was just no way of knowing for sure." He grinned at Len. "We needed a second opinion."

"They got you good," Len chortled.

"It will be a good place for us," Pavel insisted. "It will be marvelous."

"This is going to need some fixing," Jim said, accidentally absorbed in his application. "Like, you didn't even get my _name_ right. This whole document is suspect."

Len and Sulu both blinked. "But you said you were adopted by the Hendersons," Sulu said.

"That's what I thought too," Len agreed.

"Yeah." Jim shrugged. "They never let me change my name though. Part of the, like, adoption agreement with my birth mother. She insisted I keep her last name, something about history with my birth father or something weird. Not worth mucking up the adoption for," he stressed to his audience.

"So what's your last name?" Sulu demanded. "C'mon! You'll know soon enough anyway, so my full name is Hikaru Sulu. What's yours?"

"James Kirk," Jim replied, already focused on fixing his application. When he looked up, Len, Sulu, and Pavel were all staring at him, mouths agape.

"Is that bad?" Kit asked uncertainly.

"You're going to cause a riot," Sulu said, somewhat giddily. "The brass are going to _flip out."_

"You tell me about how the community works," Pavel said, crossing the room to loop one arm through Jim's, "and I will tell you who Starfleet thinks you are. I will tell you your legacy. This is going to be wonderful."

"It can only end in tears," Len groaned.

The trio began their first semester only a few months later, and Pavel was proven almost instantly correct. But so was Len. Jim took to Starfleet like a belligerent duck to uncertain waters. Most everyone assumed Jim had died at some point in childhood, so to have him show up from out of the blue, a creature of light and darkness with intelligence nearly unrivaled by his classmates, caused what Len would describe in later years as "something of a stir".

Kit continued sending him periodic updates, paired with supplemental materials—usually embarrassing pictures or videos—from Sulu and Pavel.

Time passed. Jim and crew finished their first year at the Academy. Len thrived in his rotations at the Medical Center. Joanna continued to grow and develop in her own little person under the watchful eye of her parents. Everything seemed to be going so perfectly.

For a while.

* * *

During his last year of med school, Len's life fell apart.

His advisors were all clamoring for him to pick a specialization, a hospital, a mentor for his residency. None of the options felt right; none of them really _fit._

Joselyn left him, unable to accept the reality of being a doctor's wife. For the first few months, she claimed it was just a separation, that they'd work through it and be stronger. She took Jo, most of Len's friends, the house. Everything. She never came back. Her last contact was divorce papers.

Jim called.

Len sat in what had been his office, now packed and ready to be shipped to a new place he didn't even have. He stared at the incoming com, hardly processing. His thumb swiped over the screen almost without though, patching Jim through.

"Come to Starfleet," Jim said without pause. "Do your residency here. We've already got most of you application filled out; Pavel can send it over whenever you're ready."

"How did you know to call me?" Len asked, voice rough as he rubbed a hand over his eyes.

"Kit and I hacked your PADD aged ago, and she monitors it pretty much constantly. We know everything that happens to you."

Len snorted, leaning back in his chair. "Now pull the other one."

For a few heartbeats, Jim was silent. "I'm dreaming about you," he admitted, low and intense the way he only got when he was really worried. "Again. There are things that thrive on the kind of sadness you're putting off, even before we talk about how tasty your magic is. Together? You're a buffet at a five-star restaurant."

"Five star restaurants don't have—"

"You're weak when you're unhappy," Jim continued right over him. "Less attentive. More open to attack. You need to get somewhere safe to recover. There's nowhere better for you than Starfleet. Sulu, Pavel, Kit, and I are renting a four-person apartment not far from campus. We have space for you. And if you won't be safe with a vampire, a monster hunter, and a half-Beldam, then there isn't a safe place left in the whole world."

Len blew out a harsh breath. "…Again?"

"What?"

"You said you're dreaming about me _again._ When did you dream about me before?"

Jim made an impatient sound. "The fairy ring, okay? I dreamed about the monster on the other side of the fairy ring, and you were central. If you'd gone through on your own, it would have eaten you, which would have been _bad,_ okay? What does this even _matter?"_

"You weren't dreaming back then," Len protested. "You didn't start dreaming until your shields cracked open."

"I dreamed about Tarsus," Jim said, sounding defensive. "For _years,_ I dreamed about that place. It would have been the dawning of a brand new type of horror. So would your death, consumed by that thing, and your daughter with her untrained magic."

Len shut his eyes on a new stab of pain. "I won't get to train her," he said brokenly, leaning forward to brace his elbows on his knees, head in his free hand. "Jim, she'll grow up without me."

"You can still train her," Jim insisted. "Don't you remember the old ways? You can enchant letters for her eyes only. Write what you know, send it to her. She'll find it when she's ready and come for you."

"Jos is so angry." Len scrubbed a hand over his eyes. "I should have spent more time with her, given her more attention. I didn't realize she felt neglected—I didn't _know._ I swear, Jim, if I'd known, I would have—"

"I know," Jim murmured, voice so understanding it almost physically hurt to hear. "Nobody knows how hard you fight for your friends and family more than I do. You've spent a lot of time saving me over the years. Let it be my turn now."

Len went.

His advisors gave him glowing recommendations for Starfleet Academy. He graduated on a Friday and arrived on campus the next Monday. Jim and his crew were waiting for him at the shuttle port, ready to haul his remaining belongings—mostly medical and magical supplies—to their shared space.

Even Pavel was there, protected from the sun by a bright yellow parasol edged with delicate lace, smile wide and excited. "You are rooming with Jim," he said, bouncing in place enthusiastically. "We have made space for you in both that room and the communal area. I am sure you will like it!"

It wasn't home. Right then, it felt like nothing ever would be again. But they'd done their best, hauling in a cabinet for him to use as a hedge witch supply storage. Len moved his hand just above the doors, trying to figure out which of them had set up the protective and dampening spells. Jim, mostly, with his unique undercurrent of hungry, patient darkness. Maybe a bit of Sulu, for stability. Pavel either didn't know any spells or lacked the necessary skill to layer them with the others.

Len could teach him, now that they were gonna share a suite.

Jim took Len's bags and dumped them in their room. "I won't say it'll be okay," he said, carefully not looking in Len's direction. "It'll get…normal. If you give it enough time." He brushed a finger under his own left eye. "You'd be surprised what you can adapt to."

"Time heals all wounds?" Len suggested bitterly.

"No." Jim shook his head. "This isn't a healed wound. But it's cauterized. You and Kit and Sulu and Pavel, you all helped make the bleeding stop. Maybe someday it'll be a scar, but if that ever happens, it'll be the kind of scar that hurts when the weather changes." He huffed a disgusted breath at himself. "Sorry, that's kind of stupid."

Len pushed his shoulder. "You've always been kind of stupid, kid. It's not surprising at this point."

Jim rolled his eyes, dumped Len's bag on what was presumably his new bed—based on Kit curled up and sleeping on the other—and headed back into the living room. "We're getting pizza for lunch," he called over his shoulder. "Be ready to go in, like, ten minutes."

"Bring me back some chicken," Kit muttered around a huge yawn, squirming around to lay on her back before going back to bed.

A laugh bubbled up, small and weary but no less surprising for it. It felt like months since he'd had anything in his life to make him life.

Jos was gone, Jo with her. The home Len had spent the last four years building was ruined. He would be a Starfleet doctor as far into the future as he could imagine, following Jim into the black, maybe with Sulu and Pavel, maybe not. Nothing was as solid as it looked. Nothing was as lasting.

Only Jim. Only the button's darkness and Jim's struggle to contain it.

There were worse ways for Len's fairytale to fall apart.

"You're eating a salad," he told the other three humans, dropping his bags on the floor before going back out into the main room where they were waiting for him. Len pointed a finger at Jim, then dragged it through the air to encompass the other two. "Well," he amended, giving Pavel a once-over. "Maybe not _all_ of you."

"I can eat," Pavel insisted, readying his parasol for the midday sun. "It does not nourish or satisfy me, but it is enjoyable as part of what I once was." He looked wistfully into a middle distance. "I do miss garlic bread though. You know," he added to Len as they all headed toward the door, "garlic bread was invented in Russia."

Len felt his face contort in confusion. "…What?"

Pavel nodded firmly, popping his parasol open just before stepping outside. "Yes, it was quite an interesting story. Perhaps you would like to see it!"

Len glanced back at Sulu and Jim, who were, instead of closing the door behind them, making some kind of bet. "If it doesn't include Catherine the Great," Sulu said, apparently in clarification, "then you lose. Is that what we're saying?"

Jim made an impatient _go on_ motion. "Yeah, man, what else? I've got two weeks of dish duty."

"Call," Sulu said, jotting a note on a scrap of paper and stuffing it in his pocket.

Pavel looped an arm through Len's before Len could figure out what was going on. "You will like this story," he decided.

"What the hell," Len sighed, decided to just go along with it. "I guess I will."

He didn't.

But pretending wasn't bad.

So he kept doing it: pretending every day that things were fine, that he could recover, that joining Starfleet was a choice and not a survival strategy. It didn't work. But someday it might.

He kept doing it.


	4. The Search for Jim

Aaannnddd here it is, Spock's great return and the introduction of Uhura. Next chapter features UST and also Scotty, but not together. Plus the fate of Vulcan. Some other stuff too. But first: Spock and his ongoing zero chill.

My writing has slowed down a LOT since the end of NaNo. Sorry! I'm trying really hard to be self-motivated with varying degrees of success.

ALSO, come visit me on Tumblr! I'm distractedkat. Come say hi!

* * *

The Search for Jim

* * *

Spock could not find Jim.

Once his father took him away from Earth, from any means of warning Jim about his imminent removal back to Vulcan, Spock used every skill he had to send his friend an explanation. Jim would not understand Spock's disappearance. Logic suggested Jim would see it as confirmation of his belief that his mind was poison to those who touched it.

Spock _had_ to get a message to Jim.

Yet he could not.

No human in Jim's age range had the name James Henderson. Spock never learned what Jim's exact birthday was and could not find him that way. Neither Donna nor Dave appeared in any records as far back as Spock could search. There were plenty of Donna Hendersons in the New York area, or Dave Hendersons working for the New York police department. Each flagged file had a picture; none of the matched.

They seemed to simply not exist. Jim often hinted at the true age of his guardians, causing Spock to wonder if perhaps they had never created accounts with more modern communication systems. If they had no profiles, Spock could not locate them.

He asked Amanda, but she would give him no suggestions. "You'll find him," she said, again and again, either refusing or unable to clarify when Spock asked her _how._

It became apparent that Spock could not get a message to Jim. At least, not as long as he lived on Vulcan. So, someday, he would not live on Vulcan. He would move to Earth permanently, find employment that allowed him to search other systems for traces of Jim and his strange little family, to investigate in person. How to best do that, though?

The answer came to him while discussing astronomy with his mother and seemed, in retrospect, almost foolishly obvious: He would go to Starfleet. As a cadet, he would have no responsibilities beyond his studies, which would leave him an excess of free time to dedicate to his ongoing search. Four years of study before they could assign him to a ship, more if he took a post on-world. It would be enough time.

It had to be.

Sarek continued to act as though their hurried flight from Earth had nothing to do with his disapproval of Jim. Disapproval was, after all, an emotion. True Vulcans did not allow emotions to impact their actions. Thought this sentiment failed under any sort of scrutiny: His father's people treated his mother cruelly, even when logic dictated they listen to her or at least treat her with polite disregard. Their torment was doubtlessly driven by petty, base emotions. Vulcans felt _and_ acted on it.

Sarek feared Jim, his influence over Spock, the changes he saw in his son that were easy to lay at a stranger's feet. Sarek tore them from their newly built lives at the whim of fear. He would stand between Spock and his goals if he knew them.

The only logical choice, then, was to tell him nothing. Spock confided in his mother as he hadn't since his childhood, planning a future away from her. He expected her to show her sadness or upset at the thought of him living the rest of his life on a world far away from her reach, but she seemed nothing so much as content. Once again, she seemed to want Jim for her son, or to want them for each other, as though they would one day be stars orbiting each other, as though that was how their lives _should_ go.

She would not confirm her machinations when Spock brought them up. Mostly she smiled coyly and changed the subject.

Spock put it from his mind. Perhaps someday she would be more forthcoming about her predictions. As that day did not appear to be anywhere in Spock's near future, he set it aside as unnecessary. Right now, he needed to focus on keeping his academic record utterly perfect, so unparalleled that Starfleet would come after him on their own.

Meanwhile, Spock loaded his coursework with mind healing specializations. He practiced mediation with any healer who would spare him the time, refining his ability to manipulate the meld until they began whispering _prodigy._ Some of the word came with a touch of fear: Sybok had also managed such a mastery.

Spock was not Sybok. Spock's goals had nothing to do with Vulcan tradition, what it meant or its merit. The traditions served his purpose, so he pursued them. He would need these skills to save Jim, to build the weapons that would sever the Beldam's hold. Jim would be free.

He would be with _Spock_.

As soon as Spock could find him.

Two years passed that way. On the day of his interview with the Vulcan Science Academy, arranged for him by his father and not worth struggling against, Spock was already packed for Starfleet, admissions information downloaded to his encrypted PADD. He rejected admission to the VSA with all due respect, kissed his mother goodbye, and got on a public ship that would get him to Earth within the week. After settling into his dorm, Spock went to New York.

He could not find Jim. It had been a slim hope: Spock had visited the Henderson household only a few times, never along the same route, and could not recall the long-ago details well enough to track them down. He tried asking around, attempting to locate the fair and the people therein who might still know Jim. No one admitted to understanding what he was talking about, though their faces did grow sad when he mentioned Jim

Something had happened.

They would not tell him what.

Back at Starfleet, Spock dominated his courses. No other student came close to matching his scores, to the point where instructors began to exempt his grades when calculating the curve. The students seemed annoyed and awed in turns, the teachers in raptures, though of course none of that mattered.

A year passed.

Spock paid no attention to the students around him, focused with singular intent on his extracurricular mission. None of his attempts to locate Jim, or even the underground supernatural community, met with any success. Spock began devising search algorithms to isolate news reports that might be related to magic or cryptids, with mixed results. Something about the syntax continued to elude him, skewing his results. The few times he conducted in-person research into the nature of the potential hits, they came back null. Math, it seemed, could not bridge the language gap between Vulcan and Terran Standard, not even with the assistance of the universal translator.

Nyota Uhura fell into his lap. Very nearly literally: The first time they met, Uhura was running down a flight of stairs as Spock climbed it, and he happen to catch her when she stumbled and fell. Spock's PADD clattered to the ground.

"I'm so sorry," Uhura exclaimed, kneeling to pick it up and hand it back to him. "I'm not usually so clumsy, I just—Is this a phonetic breakdown of the morning traffic report?"

Spock would not classify his gesture at that moment as _snatching_ his PADD back, though others might define it in such a way. "It is extremely impolite to read other people's personal documents," he said, calm and rational as he clutched the devise in both hands.

Uhura lifted her own hands in a typical Terran gesture of harmlessness. "Again, I'm sorry. You're absolutely correct. If it helps, I'm in the xenolinguistics track. I can try to make up for my rudeness by recalibrating your program. You've probably noticed it's a little off."

After a long hesitation, Spock handed the PADD back. "Your assistance would be…gratifying, if you are skilled as you seem to believe. Although I must stress that you do not have my permission to read through the resulting files."

"Sure," Uhura said, more interested in the program than Spock's instructions. She hummed thoughtfully, wrote a few lines of code, and returned the PADD. "There you go! If that ends up not working right again, my name is Uhura. Nyota Uhura." She offered him what other humans might see as a charming smile. "Ask around, someone can point me out. I'm always available to help a fellow student of language." After a brief wave, she resumed her jog down the stairs, across the courtyard, and into a different building.

Interesting, Spock thought, and dismissed her as ultimately unimportant to his mission.

Her edits helped. Spock did not find Jim, but he _did_ find a small group of vacationing witches who insisted Jim was dead.

Jim was not dead. Spock would know. He would have _felt it._ Jim was alive. For some reason, the witches were operating under a severe misapprehension.

Jim was _alive._

Spock tracked down Uhura. "Would you still be willing to help me," he asked her when she came out of her advanced phonemes course—advanced classes as a freshman was impressive but not enough to comment on—the day after the witch confrontation, "if I were unable to disclose the purpose of my search?"

Uhura blinked in surprise, then tilted her head to an attractive angle in thought. "Maybe," she said at last. "If it came with a coffee. Or dinner."

Considering what Spock knew of Terran courting rituals, Spock thought the offer for dinner might be an inappropriate addition. "It is important that you know," he said, "before any potential partnership, that I am not available for a romantic relationship."

Instead of being upset or offended, Uhura threw her head back and laughed. "You're my type," she admitted, "but I'm a _linguist._ You think I don't know what love looks like on someone? Even a Vulcan?" She grinned, shifting her weight onto one hip. "You're not as inscrutable as you hoped."

"I am Spock," he said, thoroughly impressed.

"Good to meet you," she replied, not extending her hand for a shake.

Clever.

Spock stepped back. "There is a café near here, if you are available to begin now."

"Sure," Uhura agreed, still grinning. "This is going to be quite an adventure, I can already tell."

* * *

Eventually, of course, Uhura figured it out. One sunny afternoon, sipping on an iced tea, reading over the search parameters Spock had outlined. Spock, sitting across from her sorting through data, noticed her paused, chewing on her straw pensively.

Spock set his PADD down and crossed his hand on the table. "What is your concern?" he asked.

Uhura visibly hesitated. "Spock…" she began, reluctance in every layer of her tone. "It's… Stop me if I'm crazy," she insisted.

"Unlikely," Spock reminded her. "Tell me your hypothesis."

"It's…" She huffed a sigh through her nose. "I _feel_ crazy asking this, but…are we looking for fairytale creatures? Or, maybe…witches?" One elegant hand twisted through the air, as though she could draw the words she wanted from the air. "Magical things? Or, rather, the _sighting_ of magical things?"

"I am looking for someone," Spock said.

"We've been doing this nearly all semester," she said incredulously. "You've been looking for someone that long?"

"A great deal longer," he corrected her. "He was an important figure in my life when I was younger. Through decisions not my own, I failed him. I have used every moment since then in preparation of meeting him again. Now that I have achieved the goal of moving to Earth, all that remains is to find him. And I must, Uhura. I must find him."

Uhura propped her chin on one hand, studying Spock the way she did written language, searching him for clues. "This guy," she murmured at last. "He must be pretty special."

Spock inclined his head but refused further confirmation.

"He's the one, isn't he? The one you love."

"He is mine to find," Spock replied. "Mind to assist. Mine to heal, in a manner uniquely mine to offer. I will find him."

"If you really left him in the lurch," Uhura pointed out, "he might not be in the best mindset to be found. What's your plan if he won't see you?"

"I will write to him," Spock said with a faint shrug. "Or convince his friends. He may be as displeased as he wishes. I acknowledge the harm I caused him. Now I will correct it, whatever effort that takes."

"This is so romantic," Uhura sighed with a whimsical smile.

Spock resisted the urge to display his annoyance.

"But," she added, lifting one finger, "that doesn't explain why you're trying to find _monster_ sightings."

"I do not think you would believe my explanation," Spock offered.

Uhura wrinkled her nose.

"Very well." Spock flicked through his PADD to show Uhura a long-kept and coveted picture: a dim restaurant where three people and a small black cat ate their dinner.

"Aw," Uhura cooed, leaning forward to look more closely but not reaching out to touch. "Look at how little you are!"

"I was fifteen in this picture," he acknowledged. "The woman is my mother, Amanda Grayson. The boy is he whom I seek: Jim Henderson. The cat is his familiar, in a sense, whose name is Kit. My mother arranged this meeting through an unbelievable series of events she was able to manipulate into existence through use of her precognitive abilities."

Uhura blinked. "Your mother can see the _future?"_

Spock inclined his head, setting his PADD down. "She does not make predictions and has never clearly stated how far she sees, or in what detail, or how much control she has over the manipulation of future events. But yes, she can."

"You aren't lying." Uhura frowned. "You're either telling the truth, or you really _believe_ you're telling the truth. Is that why we're looking for Jim in monster sightings?" Her long fingers began to drum on the arm of her chair. "He's psychic too, and hangs around creatures?"

"Your skepticism is warranted," Spock said. "If you wish to discontinue our association, I will understand, although I will also require that you not share any of this information without outside parties."

Uhura held up her hand. "I'm not running away. I'm asking questions so I can understand better. If we're going to move forward, I'm going to need the whole story."

That was true. The whole story would also be a good way to test Uhura's commitment to Spock's cause. So he told her.

Everything.

She did not look willing to believe him. The further into the story he got, the further her eyebrows creeped up her forehead. Likely, she would accuse him of either insanity or addition to illicit substances.

When he was done, Uhura said nothing. She sat, and watched him, and thought. Eventually, she reached across the table to take Spock's PADD and examine the picture he'd showed her. He had others: Jim never developed the habit of taking pictures, but his adoptive parents did. Occasionally they would send those pictures to Spock, and even more occasionally the images would contain cryptids or magic or both. One even contained a ghost, though specters generally did not take well to the medium.

Spock did not offer those images as proof. If Uhura agreed to help him despite the revelation, perhaps later he would be willing to share what he had of Jim with her.

…Although, perhaps not.

"Why can the cat speak?" Uhura asked at length.

"She claimed all cats _could,_ but lacked interest in it due to humans not being adequate conversational partners." He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "Neither she nor Jim ever disclosed the details of their meeting, but something during that event bound Kit to Jim of her own choice. Jim is hers more than anything else. She, apparently, worked hard for his life. She saved him. So she speaks with him, and those he finds worthy, and is quite the compelling conversationalist as a result."

Uhura resumed studying him. Spock wondered what she was looking for, if it was something he could provide or something she must discover on her own. He began planning what he would do if she decided not to believe him. How could he use what she'd already given him to find Jim?

"Oh, don't look at me like that," she signed, in relation to apparently nothing.

"I am not looking at you like anything," Spock pointed out. "This is always my expression, as I am Vulcan and do not display outward emotion."

Uhura rolled her eyes. "Sure you don't." Before Spock could reply, she leaned forward, eyes intent on his. "I'm not saying I believe you, okay? You deserve my honesty, considering how honest you're being right now, even if it's rooted in deep madness. So no, I don't necessarily _believe_ you. But I want to try to." She indicated the pale blue morning sky—blue like the eye that still belonged to Jim—with a sweep of her hand. "There are stranger things out there in the black than anything we could predict or describe. So why not here on Earth too? I'm willing to try and see what you say is out there. Until I can be sure either way, I'll withhold judgement."

Spock nodded. "A most scientific approach."

"You'd better show me some real magic though, if it exists," she complained, stirring her straw around her iced tea.

"If you help me find it," Spock agreed, "I will show you the world of magic Jim once showed me. That is, after all, the point."

Uhura laughed, then pointed her straw at Spock. "You'd better deliver."

"As you say."

With Uhura's help now refined through understanding the actual goal, their success rate for isolating genuine instances of Other beings in the news increased exponentially. They almost never investigated a story that didn't turn out to be what they wanted. In that way, Uhura met witches, a ghost, and several creatures Spock did not know the names of.

"Okay," she said as she and Spock helped mediate an argument between two harpies squabbling over the land rights to a particular branch on a dead tree. "I'll commit to believing you now."

The harpies didn't know anything about Jim. None of the Other beings seemed to. A few recognized the name, either Jim's specifically or the Hendersons' or Doyles' more generally, but they had no information about any of them. The Hendersons and Doyles operated in a social sphere unattainable by the average creature; they were spoken of in reverent whispers but not in any useful detail.

Some of the beings they found continued to insist Jim was dead. Had died many years ago, battling a great foe.

Jim did not battle. He negotiated. Therefore, he was not dead.

They continued searching.

One winter afternoon, Uhura let herself into Spock's single-occupancy room, dusted the snow off her shoulders, hung up her coat, and said, "I think there's a vampire on campus."

Spock considered the odds of that and realized he didn't have enough information to complete his calculation. "Explain."

Uhura handed him the bag of pho she'd gone out to get for their homework and planning lunch session. "There's a little cadet, unusually young, with curls and a Russian accent, who never goes outside in daylight without a parasol."

"Are there not humans who are allergic to sunlight?" Spock asked while dividing up their meals. "That might also explain his aversion."

"Sure." Uhura popped open the lid of her broth and began to drop in the noodles and her favorite vegetables with dexterous flicks of her chopsticks. "It's rare to still be allergic after intake to the Academy though."

Vulcan had almost no occurrences of allergic reactions extending into adulthood. Doubtlessly this had something to do with their coming-age-ceremonies, which tended to…select against weakness of any kind. "Indeed," he said, focusing on his soup.

"Mmm," Uhura agreed. She gave her meal a stir to encourage the rice noodles to separate. "There's usually only a few cadets every decade or so whose immune systems are so complicated or otherwise fragile they can't be recalibrated. They end up being guinea pigs over in the medical department." The swirling chopsticks paused. "Actually," she recalled, "I think I heard we have a special case in my year. He wasn't Russian though, he's some special case hick from the middle of nowhere in Iowa. Kirk or something."

The name meant nothing to Spock. "If the Russian cadet does indeed consistently use a parasol to protect himself from the sun," he said, lifting a bite of noodles from the broth to allow them to cool a bit, "and he is not allergic, that still does not necessarily mean he is a vampire."

"If he is," Uhura said after swallowing some beansprouts, "he might be a good resource. I haven't met a vampire yet, so that'd be interesting all on its own, but I also remember your Jim's adopted mom is one as well. He might be the lead we're looking for."

"We would have to be certain," Spock insisted. "We could jeopardize our careers if we accost a random cadet who is merely human after all. I am not familiar enough with vampires to know what might expose them."

"Lore says garlic," Uhura said. "Silver, I think. Sunlight. Holy ground or holy water? We don't want to hurt him though. They're supposed to be really fast, maybe we can trick him into running." She set her food aside to pick up the closest PADD. "Let me look into it."

Spock nodded and tried to focus on his homework. For the first time in his life, he couldn't quite mange it.

They were finally getting close.

* * *

The potential vampire noticed them.

A day after deciding to investigate him, they tracked him down to the mathematics building. His name was Pavel Chekov. He was a genius of such caliber Starfleet had made an exception to admit him early on an accelerated course. Every note on his record was some variation on the same glowing, ecstatic theme of generalized adoration. His medical record was clean. None of his teachers, advisors, or other authority figures ever mentioned his parasol.

He did have one, though. It collapsed into a pencil-sized item he stuck behind his ear while indoors, such an astonishing reduction in size that Spock couldn't quite put together a solid idea on how it happened. He wanted to meet the boy to determine whether or not he was actually a vampire.

Additionally, he wanted to examine the parasol more closely.

That first day, Spock genuinely assumed they would be able to observe him for a few weeks before putting together a plan to meet and build a rapport while attempting to determine whether or not he was a vampire.

Pavel Chekov noticed them within ten minutes of them locating him en route between classes. They followed him at a reasonable distance when he left the building, pausing to deploy his impossible parasol. He turned a corner, and they hurried to catch up so they wouldn't lose him.

On the other side, they ran into Chekov, who was waiting for them. "What are you doing?" he demanded immediately. "I will not be an easy victim, if you've come to bully me!"

Spock and Uhura both started at him in bewilderment.

"Why would we bully you?" Uhura asked, head tilted slightly.

Chekov looked between them with deep suspicion. "What other reason would you have for following me?"

"Where did you grow up?" Uhura demanded in outrage, planting her hands on hips. "That is unconscionable! Who would bully you? _Why_?" She stabbed a finger toward the ground. "Is that happening _here?_ You should report them!"

Chekov blinked in what appeared to be shock, melting slowly into confusion as his parasol drifted lower to rest on his left shoulder. "Then what do you want?" he wondered.

Uhura's eyes darted to Spock's in a split-second of panic. Then, "Your parasol," she blurted, indicating the item with a jerk of her hand.

Chekov's grip on it tightened until it almost seemed to creak. "What of it?" he asked.

"It's beautiful," Uhura said, just as Spock said, "It has several properties I would like, as a scientist, to examine." They stared at each other.

"This is most unusual," Chekov protested. "And quite rude, as well! The parasol was made by my friend. I will tell him that you think it lovely, and perhaps ask if he will tell me how he achieved its, how did you call it?" He gave the handle a twist to make the parasol twirl. "Several properties. The color, maybe?" His smile tweaked into something nearly mocking. "The shape?"

"What is it made of that it can collapse to such a size?" Spock asked, unable to resist now that the topic was open, even as cover for their subterfuge.

"Magic," Chekov replied with an ironic lift of one eyebrow. He inclined his head and walked away.

"Cheeky," Uhura said approvingly. "Even if he's not a vampire, he's definitely worth annoying."

Spock tried to devise a response to that and could not settle on anything appropriate.

Uhura nudged him in the side with her elbow. "Come on. We need to figure out a better plan."

True.

Except the better plan was, apparently, to accost Chekov whenever they noticed him on campus. Uhura insisted they do this whether or not they were together, to let no opportunity go unharassed. Chekov's exasperation with them grew visibly every time they found him, though he seemed no closer to confirming whether or not he was actually a vampire.

Spock began to suspect Uhura simply enjoyed needling the young Russian.

"What is the function of this plan?" Spock asked as they increased their pace to catch up with Chekov, who noticed them with a scowl and broke off from the group of cadets he was talking to in order to flee.

"It's a very human plan," Uhura acknowledged as they approached the corner where they'd lost sight of Chekov. "We evolved as pursuit predators. It's in our nature to follow and terrify our prey until they succumb."

"…Are you using this as an experiment for your paper on body language and the human stress response?"

"Don't be ridiculous," she scoffed, leading the charge around the corner. "Of course I am. But I also—"

Chekov was gone.

A large, undisrupted, open space stretched out before them with no trace of their target. He had either vanished, or moved so quickly he escaped in the space of seconds.

"I also remember our goal," she concluded triumphantly. "We forced him to respond, and now we know: He's a vampire."

"Or something else that moves quickly," Spock pointed out, more from habit than conviction.

"Now that we know he's probably what we think he is," Uhura said, gesturing for Spock to follow her, "we begin Phase Two."

"Which is?" Spock prompted.

It was learning as much about vampires as they could in order to form questions to spring on Chekov.

"Surprising him into answering our questions, allow me to quote you, 'whether he wants to or not' does not appear, upon reflection, to be the most sustainable method of contact."

Uhura looked up from her textbook, eyes unfocused as she ran back through Spock's latest objection. Then she lifted her shoulders in a shrug. "Humans don't always make sense, but we've studied ourselves enough by now that we can make a few educated guesses. Chekov was always going to be suspicious of us; his secret is too big to trust us easily. If we'd tried to make friends with him under the pretense of just liking him, it would have taken months to get far enough under his guard to test for…" Her brow wrinkled finely in confusion. "…vampireness? Vampiring? Vampire…ocity?"

"The state of being a vampire," Spock suggested mildly.

She shook her head, bringing up her Questions for Chekov document to make a note. "That's too wordy, we'll have to ask him the proper terminology. Anyway, if he thought we made fun of him to trick whether or not he's a vampire out of him, we'd lose him forever." One of her hands twisted delicately through the air. "Which would be problematic. In comparison, what we've done is fairly straightforward: He knows we want something from him, he probably guesses by now it's related to his…vampired…nature, but we haven't attacked him, so he can assume it's academic."

"This is very well thought out," Spock complimented her.

Uhura spread her arms in what looked like a display of offence. "Did you think I was making this up for the _laughs?"_ she demanded.

Spock nodded. "I did," he said. "It appears I was incorrect, and I offer my apologies."

"Why did you do it then?" Uhura shifted restlessly in her chair, folding and unfolding her legs as she failed to settle. "Why have you been following my lead for _weeks_ if you thought it was all a game?"

"I thought it was mostly a game," Spock clarified. "You are a better student of human nature than I, so I assumed a plan would eventually emerge from the fun you were having."

"You're an idiot," she complained, finally slumping back in her seat. "If you'd just _said,_ I could have explained."

"There is no purpose to looking back," Spock said, setting his hands together calmly. "What questions would best serve us?"

Uhura provided him with a list. Unfortunately, before they could ambush Chekov with any of her suggestions, a complication arose.

Chekov began to be escorted everywhere he needed to go by a command cadet named Hikaru Sulu. Unlike Chekov, Sulu was not a genius. However, his record was similarly perfect, filled with praise and soaring expectations. His flight scores were the highest at the Academy; he was already captain of the fencing club; some of his botany papers had been published in Federation periodicals.

He was not a vampire, standing beside Chekov in full sunlight without any protection. Something in his body language implied he considered himself the Russian's personal guard. Chekov's relaxed smile seemed to agree with the sentiment.

Spock felt a flare of irritation at this new obstacle between himself and Jim.

Uhura, for her part, looked fascinated. "A new point of attack," she said, pleased. She inclined her head toward the pair. "Sulu is in my biology class. He's so far ahead of the rest of us he's basically the TA. I can use that."

She certainly tried.

Sulu, who Uhura reported as being friendly to her in past encounters, knew her as one of the people following Chekov, and became nearly hostile in their few chats.

"This is worse than some of the first contact missions I've read about," she commented one day, still pleased. "Once I get him on my side," she added at Spock's annoyed eyebrow tilt, "he'll be our key to Chekov."

"He has resisted your attempts for weeks," Spock pointed out.

"He's not even sure what he's resisting," Uhura said with a dismissive swat of one hand. "This is good practice for negotiating with distrustful cultures." She tapped a finger against her forehead. "I'm going to crack him."

Spock had no reason to distrust her. Still, doing nothing was not Spock's way, either as a person or a scientist. He continued to observe: Uhura's ongoing negotiations; Sulu and Chekov's interactions, with each other and those around them; the reactions of professors and classmates to either or both of them.

They seemed to have a third close friend, an angry man in cadet reds who spent a great deal of his time in the hospital on campus. A medical student, perhaps, doing his residency work. Uhura seemed peripherally aware of him but made no effort to extend her friendship overtures to him.

"Chekov and Sulu know that I know that Chekov is a vampire," she reported in passing about a week after their last update meeting.

Spock handed over a coffee he'd purchased for her. "And the doctor?"

She took the drink with a shrug. "Leonard McCoy, doing his medical residency. Sulu seems closer to Chekov than McCoy is, so I'll continue to focus on him. Neither of them displayed fear characteristics when I intimated my knowledge of Chekov's condition; they were more irritated than anything." She grinned as though she'd won a great prize. "They're getting used to me. Sulu's lack of aggression is helping Chekov normalize my intrusion. I'll be able to get straight answers in no time at this rate!"

'No time' was not quantifiable. Within four days, Spock saw Uhura sitting with Sulu and Chekov in the cafeteria, sharing lunch. Chekov and Uhura were laughing, books and papers spread around their food while they scratched notes with their heads bent together. Sulu looked somewhat confused, but mostly resigned, as he ate his meal and read something on his PADD.

Spock sat close enough to observe, but not quite within hearing range.

Toward the end of the meal, Uhura produced her list of vampire-related questions, which she carried with her everywhere. She smoothed it flat, expression shy and curious, before sliding it over to Chekov. After an initial moment of hesitation, he succumbed to Uhura's charming countenance, and tilting his head to read the questions. He pointed at the first one and opened his mouth.

Their doctor acquaintance, Leonard McCoy, burst into the room. He looked around with a frantic air. Once he spotted the table where Uhura, Sulu, and Chekov sat, he immediately ran over, ignoring their greetings to lean down and whisper urgently into Sulu's ear. Sulu and Chekov both reacted. Sulu's eyes widened as Chekov jerked around in apparent shock. Without a word to Uhura, they all three worked on shoving all their papers into Chekov's bag and hurried outside.

Spock went over to Uhura, who still looked surprised. "What did he say?" Spock asked, taking a seat by his companion.

Uhura's expression melted into something altogether more calculating. "I didn't catch what he said," she admitted. "But I am moderately skilled at lip-reading."

Of course she was.

"He didn't give me an unobstructed view of his mouth, but I thought I saw _him_ and _dreaming_ and _worse._ " She rested an elbow on the table to cradle her chin. "I guess they must have an additional friend we don't know about. Someone sick, maybe?"

They had no way of knowing. No way of finding out, either, since Sulu and Chekov began to vanish between classes. Once, late at night when most students were already asleep, Spock stepped out of the library and saw Sulu waiting anxiously down the alley between two building, too far in the dark for humans to see.

Spock was not a human. He watched Sulu pace between the buildings, waiting. Chekov appeared in a blur of motion beside him, gripping Sulu's left arm just above he elbow. Sulu startled, just slightly, before meeting Chekov's eyes and nodding. The vampire wrapped an arm around Sulu's waist, looked up as though gauging the distance to the roof, gathered himself for a leap, and vanished again.

As he had yet to personally witness Chekov's vampiric abilities, Spock had assumed proof of the cadet's condition would be more satisfying. Instead, it added another layer to the mystery, which Spock was beginning to resent.

Until their friend improved or went away, Spock would be unable to use Chekov as a path to the Hendersons, to Jim. This friend's misfortune seemed to be the worst thing to happen to Spock's progress since before he'd recruited Uhura.

As long as Chekov came for Sulu to fetch him back to their ailing friend, Spock could not follow them. Sulu was careful to wait for Chekov, to never lead anyone back to their dwelling. Spock knew they did not live on campus; Uhura had been able to get that much out of them some time ago. Hacking their records would produce their exact location, but that seemed…unethical.

More to the point, it might raise suspicions even Uhura could not smooth over. Spock could not quite guess how she would react if he were to undo so much of her hard work through impatience.

That did not, of course, dissuade Spock from attempting to track them back to their apartment. He felt compelled to do _something_ to further the cause. Perhaps if he met their friend, he could solve the issue causing them such concern, and ask for the Hendersons' contact information as a token of thanks.

Spock began to follow the doctor. He was less aware of his surroundings than the other two, making it a simple task. Yet, somehow, Spock could not seem to keep sight of him once he left campus. Someone always got in Spock's way, or something would disrupt his line of sight. Occasionally he thought he saw McCoy fiddling with a trinket right before these interruptions happened, but correlation did not necessarily imply causation. Still, it was something to be aware of.

The stalemate continued. A week. Ten days. Even Uhura began to show signs of frustration. Chekov, Sulu, and McCoy's obsession with their friend did not impact their class standing—top 3%, each of them—but their extracurricular lives ended. They did not so much as even take their meals in the common areas. Personnel on campus began to notice.

Sometimes Spock caught pieces of conversation between two or more of them, enough to develop the shape of their problem but no useful details. The friend was getting worse; they were looking for someone they thoughts might help, though they did not know who; their friend was not cooperating with medical orders. No long-term solutions had been discovered.

Spock began to scour the news again. As long as Chekov's friend was such a priority, his usefulness to Spock's mission was nonexistent. Uhura could keep after him as long as she pleased. Spock would find new avenues to pursue.

Or, at least, that was the plan.

Spock knew the medically interesting student with the persistent allergies was named Kirk. He even knew Kirk had a history with Starfleet, some family member or other who had once done a commendable act. Kirk's first name was James, but there were fifteen other students with that name in the freshman class alone, and anyway Spock's Jim had never expressed any interest in space or interplanetary exploration. James Kirk battled only a handful of other students, including Pavel Chekov, for the top spot at the Academy. Spock knew these details without any desire to: Almost everyone on campus gossiped about Kirk at one time or another. Knowing about him seemed at times to be a requirement for being a cadet.

Neither Spock nor Uhura had ever met Kirk. He was a command student and did not have occasion to travel in any of their circles.

He ran into Jim on a Tuesday.

After all Spock's effort, all the time spent planning, all Uhura's progress, every step Spock had taken to be in this place at this time, and their meeting was an accident.

Spock, on his way across the quad to a seminar, heard McCoy before anything else.

"Damn it, Jim!" the doctor cursed, sounding slightly out of breath. "What have I told you about eating food people just _give you?_ You're going to blow up like a balloon and I'm not going to do anything to save you!"

"Lies and slander," a second voice replied. "You'd save me just so you could complain about it for the rest of my life. Besides, it was fine."

A shock ran down Spock's spine. It felt as though his limbs had gone numb. His heart stuttered in his side, then leapt into a frantic race.

Jim. That was Jim's voice, his inflection, older and deeper but _Jim_.

Spock whirled around, racing in the direction he'd heard the talking. Just around the corner, there, heading toward the astronomy labs. Where, _where—_

"It was fine _this time,"_ McCoy grumbled, one hand wrapped around the red-clad arm of a tall, slim man with hair the color of sunlight. "You're not in any condition to—"

"Jim," Spock breathed. He raced toward them. _"Jim!"_

McCoy startled badly, pulling Jim behind his own body in the same motion he used to turn and face Spock.

Jim's eyes were wide with shock, one blue as the morning sky, the other dark under the button of a Beldam's curse. "Spock," he said, right hand tangled in the back of McCoy's uniform jacket. "What are you doing here?"

Spock hardly knew how to respond. There were so many layers to his being at Starfleet Academy. How to explain it without sounding…unhinged? _I came to find you_ was the truth, but it also might seem…overbearing. Perhaps Jim did not want Spock to find him. Now it was too late; Jim was found. What was the best way to establish that Spock had no intention of hurting Jim more than he already had all those years ago? "I am a cadet," he heard himself saying, calm and poised. "And you?"

"Same," Jim said, shaking his head as though Spock's mere presence were overwhelming. "I wouldn't have pegged you for a Starfleet kind of person."

"I might express similar sentiments."

Something in Jim's expression closed off, cold and remote in a breath. "Didn't figure I'd live this long, huh?"

Spock reached out, distressed that his words could be so badly misunderstood. "Jim, I—"

McCoy stepped between them. "I don't suppose I know all the details of this," he said sharply, "and frankly I don't particularly care. Jim's my patient, and he's had a rough day of it. We're going home. You be on your way too, and we'll pretend this never happened."

"I will do no such thing," Spock protested.

"Yes," Jim said, "you will. You did it before, right? Not a big deal to do it again."

"Jim," Spock pleaded, reaching out again.

The doctor pulled something from his pocket, worrying it between his fingers: the trinket. A crowd of students poured out of the nearby mathematic building, pushing between Spock and the other two. When they cleared, McCoy was gone.

So was Jim.

But Spock had found him. Jim was on _campus._ Spock could track him down, find better words to explain himself, tell Jim what had happened all those years ago. Once Jim forgave him, Spock could meld with him again, use his new skills with it to not just explore but _heal_ the button's wounds. They could fight the Beldam, together, and end Jim's long suffering.

Starting today.


	5. The Other Ship

AN: Okay, just, fuggin. HERE.

TAKE IT.

Extra special shout-out to Janie who sent me edits for this WHOLE MONSTROSITY. It's so long I ACCIDENTALLY MISPLACED ten THOUSAND words. Janie is the one who said "...I like this, it's great, but wtf happened to Spock?" Best catch of the chapter: Interdenominational Romulans. Did I mean inter-dimensional? Yes.

Yes I did.

* * *

The Other Ship

* * *

Jim pushed into his apartment and dropped his bag just inside the door. "We have to find the engineer," he said, pacing immediately toward the kitchen.

The front door closed with a bit more force than necessary: Bones being a drama queen. "We're gonna talk about this, Jim."

"Not," he chimed back, already head deep in the fridge.

"What's going on?" Kit called from the living room. She made a small thump when she landed on the ground from wherever she'd been sleeping.

" _Are,_ " Bones growled. He grabbed Jim by the back of his jacket to pull him out. A totally predictable scowl darkened Bones' entire face. Agitation swirled deliciously on the surface of a deeper, sweeter worry. Jim _ached_ to reach out and sample such a delicacy—

Bones shoved a hunk of clear quartz into Jim's face. "Take it," he snapped. When Jim hesitated, Bones took Jim's hand to press the stone into it by force. " _Focus._ "

Jim curled his fingers around the quartz, closing his eyes to seek and latch onto the feeling of release that accompanied his darkness draining out into the crystal.

Nothing happened.

Dread curdled in Jim's stomach. Tremors gripped his limbs. "Bones," he gasped.

The quartz shattered, raining to the ground in a fine black dust.

" _Jim!"_ Kit cried.

Screaming filled Jim's head, endless echoes of the Beldam's rage from the day they killed her.

 _don't leave me don't leave me i'll die without you_

Something warm slid down Jim's face. He tried to raise a hand to touch it.

Nothing happened.

His knees buckled.

Everything went dark.

…

"God damn it," Len snapped, trying to catch Jim as he collapsed to the ground. "Not again!"

"It's getting worse," Kit said, tail curling in agitation as she stood by Jim's head, sniffing anxiously at the twin lines of blood dripping from his nose.

Len yanked on a small pile of washed but not folded dishtowels from the counter near his head. He wedged one of the towels against Jim's nose, packing the others under his head. "We're going to figure this out," he said, voice shaking with the fear that they couldn't, that this dream, at last, would consume Jim, unleash the Beldam, destroy their friend and doom them all.

The front door creaked open.

"Who else is out of class right now?" Len asked Kit.

She shook her head. "Nobody, but maybe they got out early." With a quick sandpaper lick to Jim cheek, she bounded from the room. "I'm glad you're here," she called. "It's happening again, I need you to get—

"Spock?"

Her voice was a mix of surprise and uncertainty Len had never heard before. "Everything all right out there?" he asked. God, they needed another complication like a cow needed a hammock.

"I am not a threat," a new voice said. A _familiar_ voice.

"Hey!" Len cried. "You're Pavel's weirdo stalker! What're you _doing_ here, get _out!_ If I could leave this kitchen, I swear to god—"

"You know Spock?" Kit asked.

"Why can he not leave the kitchen?" the Vulcan—Spock, apparently—demanded. "Where is Jim? He cannot have had time to go out again; I would have seen him."

"Don't know why you care all of a sudden," Kit replied bitterly.

Len moved the towel to check Jim's bleeding. Still dripping, not strong but persistent. God, where was his Shepherd's Purse? Maybe some yarrow too, witch hazel, _anything_ to slow the bleeding. He should have started carrying packets of it around with him _weeks_ ago. "You wanna wrap it up out there?" he yelled to Kit. "Get rid of him and come back!"

"I left once against my will," Spock said, voice low and determined. "I will not submit to such a loss again."

"…Against your will?" Kit asked. She sounded less sure now, doubt and hope creeping in to replace her anger. "You didn't want to go? Jim thought you must have, because of the meld."

The _meld?_ What the hell?

"My mother warned me," Spock said, soft, echoed by a gentle thud like he was kneeling, "that I would face my father in two fights, and I could only win one of them. I did not fight him to stay back then, not when I would be unable to make the victory last. At fifteen, I had no power to remain behind when they returned to Vulcan. So I did not fight when he forbade me to leave the suite to find you, warn you, explain myself at all. I went with them. Now I am grown, and I fought him a second time. Instead of going to the Vulcan Science Academy, I came to Starfleet. I have searched for you every day since."

"Jim will believe you," Kit said, words wrecked with the emotions running under them like a sinkhole. "But it won't matter.

"I am content to stay until his belief is immaterial. I will become a fact of your life, Kit, yours and Jim's both. It will not need to matter."

Curiosity ate through Len's concern. He tried to twist around to see what the two in the living room were doing. In the process, the hand he'd braced on Jim's chest shifted, sliding up and onto the bare skin of Jim's throat.

Jim's hand flashed up to wrap around Len's wrist. A wicked smile curved his mouth. The tips of his fingers bled black with shadows, sharpening to long, wicked needles that pricked into Len's skin.

He did not wake up.

"Hey," Len choked. He thought he should probably scream, especially when he felt the first tug on his energy into the claws driven into his wrist. His mouth fell open and nothing came out.

 _Should have gotten more quartz,_ he thought as the room went fuzzy around him.

Before he could pass out, a strong, hot hand wrapped around his shoulder to tug him away from Jim, not sharply but inevitably, setting him outside of the shadows inking across the floor. "Take care, Doctor," Pavel's Vulcan stalker said—Spock.

Spock was kneeling by Jim.

"Don't," Len said, too exhausted to be ashamed of the weakness in his own voice.

Spock ignored him, one hand hovering over Jim's face as he seemed to test the air around him.

Kit climbed into Len's lap. "Don't worry," she said, afraid and trying not to show it. "Spock knows what he's doing. He'll help."

She didn't offer an explanation as to _how._

Spock fit his hand to Jim's psy-points. "My mind to your mind," he said.

Shock flushed through Len, giving him the strength to sit up. "Don't!" he cried.

"My thoughts to your thoughts," Spock concluded, ignoring Len entirely.

The whole room seemed to scream, a voiceless sound of fury. Blood leaked from Jim's left eye. Sweat beaded at the edge of Spock's stupid Vulcan hairline to slide down his calm, unmoved face. Shadows crushed in from every place the light cast them, straining toward Jim's prone form. The light fixture surged brightly above them, sharpening the points of darkness. Something, somewhere, wailed

 _i'll_ _ **die**_ _without you_

"Then die," Spock murmured, stroking his thumb over Jim's bottom lip, careless of the blood there.

The screaming slid up into a spiraling point just at the edge of Len's ability to hear it. Kit wedged her head into press of Len's arm against her side, trying to muffle the sound. Len cupped his hand over the back of her head, trying to offer a bit of shelter. They curled together as the house shook without moving, tearing itself apart on a level none of them could see.

At once, abruptly, everything fell quiet.

By the time Len calmed enough to uncurl, Spock was dabbing gently at the tacky blood on Jim's face.

"Somebody," Len panted, "had better have one _fuck_ of a good explanation for all this."

"The Beldam is winning," Spock said without looking up from his task. "When I melded with Jim all those years ago as children, I could see her damage spreading but lacked the skills to break her poison at the source." He looked over at Len, determination burning bright in his eyes, the most emotion Len had ever seen from a Vulcan. "I spent my years away well, Doctor. With his cooperation, I am sure we can sever the Beldam's hold and return the darkness to Jim's control."

Len stared at him. "And who're you, again?" he asked.

Kit curled up in Len's lap, resting her chin on one of his knees. "He's Spock," she said, weary and warm. "He was Jim's first companion, back when we were very young and naive. His mother is a seer. She nearly helped us avoid a bad situation."

Spock's eyebrows lowered dangerously. "Nearly?"

"You remember." Kit flicked her ears back. "She said we didn't _have_ to go after the thing in Jim's dream. And in the end, no one forced us to. We went on our own and saved a lot of people. But that's where the cracks started."

"Cracks?" Len asked. He scooped Kit into his arms so he could stand and get a small bowl of warm water for Spock's bloody task.

"Jim built…blockades," Spock explained, taking the bowl with a grateful bow of his head. "He did quite well, for a psy-null species."

Len made a dismissive motion with his free hand. "Psy-null doesn't actually mean much on Earth," he said. "Not when it comes to the community."

"The community," Spock echoed, touching the corner of his dampened towel to the soft skin beneath Jim's left eye. "Is that what you call it? Jim never referenced the Other beings as any sort of collective, although I'm sure it should have occurred to me to ask for the phrase, after seeing the fair."

"The _fair?"_ Len said, incredulity sharper in his tone than he'd intended. "Jim took you to the _fair?_ How old was he?"

"Thirteen," Kit said, tail swishing mischievously.

Len stared at her. "Who the hell has that kind of sway at _thirteen!"_ he cried. His eyes jerked back up to Spock's. "He got you into the fair at _thirteen?"_

Spock arched an eyebrow, finally setting the cloth aside after one final swipe. "I met Jim at the fair," he acknowledged. "Although he was not the way I got in. My mother secured my entrance, shortly before turning me into a frog. That is how Jim and Kit first found me."

For a long moment, Len struggled with the mental image that produced: Jim, young and innocent, a fluffy kitten version of Kit on his shoulder, chatting happily with a teenage Vulcan _frog_. "Somebody tell me this whole story," he demanded, free hand planted on his hip. "Right now."

"Certainly," Spock agreed, lifting Jim into his arms before standing. "Allow me to put Jim somewhere more comfortable first."

Len showed him to the bedroom he shared with Jim, indicating Jim's bed. He politely ignored the sweet, lingering touch Spock brushed against Jim's forehead, though he was not able to shut his ears against Kit's cooing about it. Before leaving the room, he put together an assortment of herbs and stones to encourage rest, healing, cleansing of evil, and the like. He tucked them in a mesh bag and stuffed it under Jim's pillow. Some of the tension still lingering in Jim's shoulders relaxed. Len smiled down at him, then looked up to find Spock watching them with open curiosity.

"You're a strange Vulcan," he muttered, closing the bedroom door and ushering Spock back into the living room, "aren't you?"

"I am only half Vulcan," Spock said. He perched on the couch serenely, lifting his hands from his lap to let Kit settle there when she leapt over to him. "My other half is human, on my mother's side. As I am the only of my kind, I do not feel anything I do can be considered strange. I set my own benchmark."

"Huh." Len pulled Sulu's armchair around until he could sit in it facing Spock. "I guess that explains how you can have a seer for a mom. Not a lot of those cropping up on Vulcan, last I heard."

Spock inclined his head. "We are touch-telepaths, but that is, as far I ever found, the extent of our existence in the Other. My mother has never mentioned anything like the community on Vulcan either, and I must assume she would know."

Len frowned. "How powerful is she?" he asked. "What's her name?"

"Amanda Grayson," Kit said, purring as Spock scratched under her chin.

A shock rolled down Len's spine. "Amanda Grayson," he said through numb lips.

"Yes." Spock looked intrigued. "Do you know of her?"

"Do I—" Len rubbed a hand down his face. "Jesus _Christ,_ Spock. Your mom is the most powerful psychic, the _best known_ seer, since fucking _Cassandra._ "

"Who?" Spock asked politely.

Kit began to laugh.

Len got up to dig out his PADD. "I'm sending you some reference materials, okay? You need to know about your own blasted _mom,_ man, _god._ Meanwhile." He shot Spock and Kit a narrow glare. "Somebody better tell me how you guys all met, and what you meant by Jim having _cracks,_ and what you plan on doing about it."

"Dibs on most of that first story," Kit chirped.

"As you will," Spock said, scratching behind her ears.

Len settled back in Sulu's seat, beginning his compilation of references for Spock, and listened intently as Kit wove her tale.

…

By the time Jim finally woke up, bedhead reducing his intimidation factor by an unfortunate amount, the damage had been done. Not only had Bones learned the whole story behind Jim's first meeting with Spock—along with an untold trove of blackmail material—but he was also apparently firmly on-board with Spock's unexplained and unnecessary presence in the house. In their _lives._

For no good reason.

Worse yet, Kit was sitting in Spock's lap like he'd never abandoned them without a word.

"Traitors," Jim muttered, going back into the kitchen to find the food he'd been denied earlier.

"Baby," Bones sang back to him.

Someone opened the front door. Jim popped his head out to find Pavel kicking his shoes off, parasol twirling anxiously over one shoulder. "Have you seen Jim?" he called into the house. "He was not at the— Oh! One of my stalkers!" He frowned. "What is one of my stalkers doing here?"

"Excellent question!" Jim grumbled.

A grin curled Bones' mouth, slow and wicked. "Grab a seat," he said giddily. "Have I got a story for you."

"No," Jim wailed, dashing back into the living room. "Pavel, don't listen to him!"

"Decide for yourself," Bones said, "but you should know this story involves Jim defeating a manticore via the proper application of tin foil and cat toys."

Pavel sat, looking mesmerized, hardly noticing when Spock covertly took his parasol for a thorough investigation.

"Don't break that," Jim said with a scowl. "I only had enough materials for one."

Spock looked up in surprise. "You invented this?" he asked.

Jim rolled his eyes. "Don't sound so shocked."

"I am not shocked," Spock said. He got up to follow Jim when he went back into the kitchen. "I am intrigued. Will you not tell me about it?"

"Why should I?" Jim asked, yanking the fridge open. "Seems like a big time investment for somebody who'll probably just _leave."_

Spock sat at the kitchen table, placing the collapsed parasol in front of him, serene in the face of Jim's anger. "I know what my leaving must have looked like to you," he said, tracking Jim as he threw together some sandwiches. For a moment, he had the impulse to ask if Spock wanted one, then quashed it with another scowl. "I do not know if you would believe me if I explained what really happened, what I have worked toward every day since, the advice my mother gave me that allowed me to join Starfleet and return to Earth."

"Try me," Jim sneered, piling more meat than necessary on his sandwiches in a weird, ineffectual fit of spite, "and find out."

So Spock did, beginning with, "When I arrived in the suite, and I realized my father intended to take us back to Vulcan, my first thought was to contact you, however I could."

"That sure worked out great," Jim muttered.

"My mother," Spock continued, apparently content to ignore Jim's foul mood, "warned me that I would face two battles with my father, the one in front of me and one in the future. She said I would win only one."

Jim turned around, heart stuttering in…something. He didn't really want to think about it. "What?" he asked, voice breaking.

Spock braced his hands on the table. "As I understood her warning, and the timing of it, if I fought my father, ran away to find you and tell you what was happening, I would be successful. That success would mean failure in a different but related fight later. She could mean only one thing: When I was grown, I would fight my father for the opportunity to return to Earth, and lose. If, however, I lost the fight to warn you, I would someday successfully rejoin you here." Spock's dark, endless eyes slid up to meet Jim's. "I could not allow the brief comfort of finding you as a teenager to override the potential for a lifetime with you as adults. So I went. I learned. And when it was time, I returned."

Jim swallowed hard, setting down his cheese carving knife to squeeze his eyes shut. "What did you learn?" he asked, voice a hoarse, trembling whisper.

He heard Spock get up, chair pushed purposefully back. "I am a prodigy among my father's people, Jim," he said. His voice slid under Jim's skin like a promise, heady and focused. One hot Vulcan hand covered his, millimeters from touching, and swept up his arm to the curve of his neck and shoulder. Jim tilted his head instinctively, heart thundering in his chest. "Before I met you, I had no particular skills with the mind meld. I had no interest in it. But you proved to be a strong motivator. Now I am recognized not simply among my peers, but all Vulcans as an adept at mind healing. I learned these skills for you, that we might join together to fight the great enemy of your childhood. Already I have touched your mind again." His hand lifted further, warmth soaking into Jim's psy-points. "Did you recognize me?"

"Yes," Jim murmured. "I broke again. I would have eaten Bones. You saved him. I felt you shore me up."

"Yes." Spock's words were nearly a growl, rumbling in Jim's blood. "I came for thee, James. She will not have you so long as I draw breath. But fighting her will not be a surface touch, as the one earlier," he continued, brisk and controlled again, drawing away from Jim as he folded his hands behind his back like nothing unusual had happened, like they hadn't just been seconds away from occupying basically the same space. "We will have to go into a deeper meld for that, which will require a great deal of trust on your part. I acknowledge the pain I caused you when I left all those years ago. Though I could not see a way around it, still I regret being a source of your pain. I will do whatever I must to earn your trust again."

Jim turned to face him, feeling dizzy. "What?"

Spock sat primly at the table, hands settled on Pavel's parasol again. "We are under something of a time crunch," he admitted. "The Beldam has been pushed back, but not for long. I am committed to helping you trust me again. Tell me what I can do, and I will."

"Go back to Vulcan," Jim begged.

"I cannot." Spock's shoulders raised in a graceful shrug. "We are both of us under contract with Starfleet." Something of a smile ghosted around the corners of his mouth. "I had not known you were interested in space travel."

"I wasn't," Jim sighed, running a hand down his face. "Pavel, the vampire, I…did something to him. It got in the way of his dream to join up."

One of Spock's eyebrows rose toward his hairline. "You became a cadet—one at the top of his class, I might add—in order to allow Pavel Chekov to live the life he chose?" One elegant hand touched the parasol. "Is this another apology you made him?"

Jim fought down a blush. "Anyone would have done the same," he argued, turning back to his sandwich construction.

"No," Spock said casually. "Almost no one would. Certainly not someone with the power you wield."

"It's the power that's the problem," Jim said, feeling tension build in his shoulders. "If I hadn't—" He shook his head. "Never mind. Is this a guilt thing? Because I don't need your guilt, Spock."

"You evoke many emotional responses in me, Jim. Guilt is not among them."

Jim lost the struggle against his fierce blush. _Change the subject,_ he thought, annoyed at himself. "So why did you join Starfleet?" he asked, turning around with his sandwich in hand. He took a large bite. "I didn't know you were interested in space either."

"I am interested a variety of topics," Spock said. "I jointed Starfleet as a means to return to Earth so I could find you."

Jim stared at him. "You've been here for _years,"_ he said, trying not to let his hurt through. "Why didn't you contact me before, if that's why you came here?"

Spock spread one hand above the parasol. "How would I contact you, Jim? I did not even have the correct surname for you, let alone an address or number. I have been searching for you by searching for Other beings, intent on asking them. Those who recognize you or the Hendersons or the Doyles either lacked the social status to know anything useful or thought you were dead. I have been trying."

"Looks like you figured it out," Jim said around another mouthful of sandwich.

"Due mostly to luck," Spock admitted. "I had heard of James Kirk, but I did not know it was you. I made the acquaintance of a Communications-track cadet by the name of Uhura who assisted me as she could—"

" _She?"_ Jim snapped before he could stop himself.

Both Spock's eyebrows ticked up this time. "Is that an issue?"

Jim glanced away. "No," he said sulkily. "Go on."

"…Cadet Uhura became convinced Pavel Chekov was a vampire. As Donna is also a vampire, I thought he might be a good way of contacting her."

"You weren't wrong," Jim sighed. "Donna loves Pavel."

"Although now I need not ask him to call her on my behalf." The faintest shade of triumph lit Spock's eyes. "Though I never managed to recruit his help, he did lead me to you."

"For what it's worth." Jim set his sandwich down. "Spock, I'm a wreck. It's been getting worse every day. I understand why you had to leave, and why you chose the way you did. But it might have been better to prioritize the time we had as kids. I don't know how much longer I can—"

Spock was up and out of his chair, crowding back into Jim's space, in less than a heartbeat. "Your despair is to be expected," he said, caging Jim in with one hand on the counter on either side of Jim's hips. "Prior to today, it might have been valid. But now I am here, Jim. I am more skilled than you believe. Together we can fight her. Put your trust in me as you did back then. Let us end this."

"I can't." Jim shook his head when Spock opened his mouth to protest. "No, Spock, listen to me. It's not about you. Or our past. I believe you, okay? You didn't want to leave any more than I wanted you to go. I'm glad you followed your instincts and, honestly, I'm glad you're back.

"But I'm dreaming again. I've had a lot of dreams since the one your mom told me didn't have to come true. They brought me to Bones, and Sulu, and Chekov, and a lot of really important events. But this one, it's—big." He swallowed hard. "It's—Spock, something is coming for Vulcan. To _destroy_ Vulcan. Something evil and Other and nearly unstoppable. All that's standing between me and confronting it is an engineer. And I'm running out of time."

"I do not understand," Spock admitted.

"There's—" Jim shut his eyes, trying to imagine a way to explain. "I'll need a ship. A crew. The engineer in red. We'll stand a chance with all that."

"I will go with you," Spock said immediately, lowering his head to nose at the curve of Jim's ear.

Jim shuddered. "We'll probably all be court-martialed," Jim said.

"Starfleet is enjoyable, but I did not join to follow a particular dream. You are my best destiny, Jim. So long as you survive so we can defeat the Beldam and see the sun rise the next day, I will follow you to whatever end."

Jim should have said no. Pushed Spock away. Refused.

He rested his head on Spock's shoulder, weak with relief.

"Show me the dream," Spock murmured. "It will be a shallow meld. Show me who you seek, and we will find that person together."

Jim obeyed.

…

When they came out of the vision, Jim's nose was bleeding again. "Does this happen often?" Spock asked, touching one finger to Jim's chin to tip it back so he could dab at the blood with another kitchen towel.

"More and more lately," Jim replied, fantastically blue eyes raised to the ceiling. "I figure it's the only way my body can figure out to react to the darkness. It's not strictly mental; there's definitely a physical component of, y'know, magic and all that Other stuff. A layer above and between, I guess. There isn't much of an outlet for the…" He jerked a hand toward his head. "Breaking."

"You are not breaking," Spock corrected him mildly, checking the towel and the bleeding before continuing his efforts.

Jim's head wagged side-to-side, just as it had when they were teenagers. "Eh," he said, filling Spock with a strange warmth. "I held up pretty good for a long time, thanks to Kit and Bones and his assorted…stuff."

"That is a particularly imprecise descriptor," Spock pointed out. He cradled a hand at the back of Jim's head to keep it tilted when he tried to straighten.

Jim made a face but didn't complain. "Bones is a hedge witch," he explained. "That's the most accurate descriptor, but I figure it doesn't mean much to you."

"No more than _assorted_ _stuff,"_ Spock agreed. He carded his hand through the short hair at Jim's nape, cataloging the warmth and softness of it. One day, when they were settled, he would have to conduct a more thorough investigation.

By then, Jim would not mind.

"Hedge witches tap into the, eh, I guess you'd call them the natural energies of the earth, for all that sounds like woo."

"Woo?" Spock echoed.

Jim's head waggled again. "Nonsense. Anyway, mostly it _is_ woo, unless the person using it _and_ the person receiving it are, like, susceptible. Attuned? Something like that. Since I am, and Bones is, that means I carry around a bunch of stones and drink a lot of tea."

"Do you find it helps?" Spock asked, checking Jim's bleeding again. It seemed to have stopped, so he wiped away the remnants and set aside the towel.

Instead of stepping away, Jim leaned into the hand still cradling his head. "Yeah," he said. "For instance, clear quartz is supposed to be good for clearing out bad stuff. It does. When I hold it long enough, it just—" He made a crushing motion with one hand. "Disintegrates. The button overwhelms it. Like trying to empty a dam with a popcorn bowl. It won't help forever. In fact, what you stopped today happened after I crumbled his biggest piece." A grimace twitched across Jim's face. "Now I'm gonna have to take him shopping to one of those insufferable new age hippy stores to replace it. _Perfect."_

Spock squeezed the back of Jim's neck encouragingly before releasing him to take a seat at the table. "We must discuss your dream."

"Now?" Jim whined even as he took the seat opposite.

"Should we call in the others?"

Jim shook his head. "What would we tell them?" he asked on a sigh. He stretched out his legs to tip the chair back. Spock appreciated, in a more than aesthetic sense, the way Jim's new position displayed his strength and balance.

"The man in your dream," he said instead of commenting on the scene and potentially causing Jim to shy away from it.

"The engineer?" Jim asked, bouncing slightly on his toes to make his chair rock.

Spock inclined his head. "I assumed, at your first description, that the _engineer_ _in red_ must refer to another cadet. Upon seeing him, it is clear that he is, in fact, an officer."

"How do we narrow it down?" Jim asked, sounding lost while he looked at the ceiling as though the engineer might be there.

"Focus on the details that are unique to the man," Spock said, leaning forward to catch Jim's gaze. "This is not the first time you have followed a dream to its undoing. What of the engineer could help you?"

Jim studied Spock for a long moment before shutting his eyes. "There's a dog," he murmured, eyebrows furrowing. "A…something small. Not Chihuahua small. More medium, I guess?"

"Is the dog important?" Spock asked.

"Yes," Jim replied, depth growing under the word. His brow creased as he shook his head, then cleared his throat, dropping his chair back down to all four feet. "Yes," he said again, sounding more like himself. "There are things that have to…line up, sometimes, for a future event to happen. The engineer has to steal the dog to be sent away where he can't help us so the…whatever…can happen to Vulcan." His eyes cracked open, frustration shining in the blue. "I don't know _why_ the dog's important, though. Or how it'll help us find him."

"We will keep looking," Spock said, brushing the finger of one hand over Jim's exposed wrist. "Already we might make some assumptions about him: If he needs to be sent away, then he must be here, on Earth. If he has a dog—"

"He doesn't." Jim blinked, looked as surprised by his interruption as Spock was interested. "It's not his dog. That's the point. Why he gets sent away."

Spock tilted his head thoughtfully. "He steals the canine? To what end?"

A tremble shivered down Jim's back, visible even from Spock's place across the table. Confusion pinched his forehead. "No, I— It's not stealing if he plans on returning it. He's going to… It's to prove the _point,_ right? He's being too proud, too stubborn, and it's _delicious—"_

Blood welled in Jim's left eye like a tear, sliding down his cheek while his dark blue button went black. He stood up from his chair abruptly to lash out at Spock, digging into Spock's forearm with a shadow-clawed hand. "You are _all_ so delicious," he hissed. Before Spock could react, Jim flinched back, losing balance as he toppled to the ground.

"Jim!" Spock called, leaping over the table to catch his limbs when Jim started to thrash in a seizure.

"What in the hell is— _shit!"_ Dr. McCoy rushed through the doorway to collapse on Jim's other side. "Pavel!" he shouted. "Get my bag!"

"What's going on?" Kit demanded, skidding into the room.

"The Beldam's attacking," McCoy said tightly. "Stay close to me, sugar, and out of the way, best you can. For Jim, Kitten."

Kit immediately tucked close to the doctor's knee, watching Jim thrash with wide eyes, ears flat against her skull.

Spock, who had forgotten Chekov was a vampire, flinched when the cadet appeared kneeling at Jim's head with his arms full of three different medical bags. "I did not know which you meant," he said anxiously, "so I got them all. There is a bit of a mess on your bed now, I am sorry."

McCoy grabbed the fattest of the three, a battered black case as long as his forearm made of well-worn black leather. He rolled it out to display rows of neatly organized crystals and vials of what were doubtlessly the plants used to make the tea Jim referenced earlier.

"How do I assist you?" Spock demanded while McCoy dropped assorted items into a small mortar.

"It's not a real seizure," he said without looking up from his work. "Closer to possession."

"It's getting worse," Kit whispered. "Can I bite him? That helps sometimes. If I bite his ear, maybe he'll—"

"Not while his blood's this full of her," McCoy said darkly. He nodded at Jim. "Try to stop him flailing around and hurting himself, Spock, would you?"

Spock encroached on Chekov's space to more easily gather both of Jim's arms, folding them carefully, firmly, over his chest.

In the blink of an eye, Chekov vanished from his position next to Spock and appeared by Jim's feet. He shuffled forward to press his hands onto Jim's thighs, squeezing Jim's feet between Chekov's knees, to immobilize Jim's entire lower half. Spock lifted Jim's torso onto his lap, leaning his weight into Jim's arms to still the rest of him. Chekov gave him a small nod of solidarity, eyes focused on Jim's blood-covered face.

Vampire strength might seem strange coming from a human body, but it definitely had its uses.

McCoy's muttering took on the tone of chanting. He produced fire from somewhere Spock couldn't see, setting his concoction alight. A heady smoke rose from the mortar, curling up in fits and starts. The longer McCoy chanted, the more the smoke produced characteristics of being… _alive_. It twisted back toward McCoy, hovering around him until he began gesturing with his free hand toward Jim. The smoke stretched down, strangely curious, until it reached Jim's face. To be more specific, his left eye.

The button.

It made a greedy sound, latching onto Jim's shut and trembling eye like a leech, drinking away in gulps that filled its belly with writhing shadow. Gradually, with every pull of the smoke's feast, Jim's struggles lessened. Eventually he fell entirely still, heavy in Spock's hold, only his breath and heartbeat proof that he lived. Still the smoke ate.

When it could consume no more, glutted on darkness, it broke off, heaving until it turned itself inside out to belch a black stone. As soon as the stone touched the ground, Kit began hissing at it, all her fur fluffed large in her emotional upheaval. McCoy, for his part, threw a fistful of salt at it. The salt couldn't touch the stone, driven away like repelling magnetic forces. It settled in a fine white ring around the foreign object. McCoy slammed a crystal bowl over the entire phenomenon, sliding a thin clear sheet between the lip of the bowl and the ground until he could flip it right-side up.

Spock watched the stone bubble and shake before disintegrating into a course black powder. McCoy ran his finger around the rim before tugging at one corner of the clear sheet, pealing it away to leave a seal over top of the crystal bowl.

"I'll take care of that later," he muttered, seemingly to himself. "Maybe Sulu will want to watch, it's good to have a second with these things."

"What things?" Chekov asked, a little shrill. "Doctor, what _was_ that?"

"Exorcism," McCoy said, still distracted with setting the crystal bowl and the rest of his items aside. "The Beldam's evil enough to be susceptible to that kind of nonsense. Don't go trying to do it yourself," he warned the vampire, whose wide eyes shone with awe. "It takes years of practice and a fuckton of knowledge to get it right, all right? _All right?"_ he stressed when Chekov didn't immediately reply.

"All right," Chekov promised, nodding so vigorously his curls bounced.

McCoy moved his glare onto Spock.

"I will have questions later," he said, shaking his head slightly, "but I am not such a fool as to dabble in this world knowing so little. Jim saved me many times from such mistakes as a child; I am wiser now, and would not so endanger myself."

"Damned straight," Kit chirped, finally slinking forward to nose at Jim's shoulder.

"Scientists," McCoy muttered, going back to his supplies. "Always with the _questions._ "

Spock thought about the impracticality of someone opposed to the scientific method being in Starfleet. Then he considered Jim's body, warm and still in his arms, and how possible it was that this cantankerous man was all that had kept Jim from being consumed for all the years Spock was gone. "How do I assist you?" he asked again.

McCoy looked surprised, then deeply curious, peering into Spock's face. "Well now," he said, low and amused. "How about that?" He grinned down at Jim's unconscious form. "Good luck living _that_ down, kiddo."

"They're pretty gross," Kit confirmed, "right? I thought it'd be better after so much time apart, but it's actually like an order of magnitude worse."

"…Can I release Jim?" Chekov asked hesitantly, already beginning to sit back on his heels.

"He's fine now," McCoy said, twisting a hand at Chekov. "Well." He frown at Jim. "He might need a touch of assistance waking up. That'll be on you," he added to Spock.

Spock looked down at Jim as well. "Do you mean for me to touch his thoughts? Is he trapped?"

McCoy shook his head. "Exhausted, more like," he said, his accent thicker with his own exhaustion. "But sleepin' deep isn't good medicine right now. Won't be until you help him beat that _thing_ in his brain. Oh yes." McCoy's expression went smug when Spock turned to him in surprise. "You're not near as subtle and you want to be, what with how clearly you're moonin' over Jim and how quick you were to do your Vulcan hoodoo on him."

"You do of course realize," Spock began, "how ironic it would be for you to castigate—"

"I don't mean anythin' bad about it," McCoy interrupted. "Just lettin' you know I know where you stand—where you _want_ to stand—with Jim. That's what I'm getting' at, sayin' you can help him wake up. If we get him somewhere quiet, somewhere warm, you can be an anchor that brings him back around to us. He'll know you deeper down than any of the rest of us. Excepting maybe Kit," he allowed, "but that's not the kind of connection we're needing right now, no offence, darlin'."

Kit let him pet a hand down her back.

But Chekov's expression filled with outrage. His mouth curled into a snarl that showed one pointed fang.

McCoy threw one of his unused med bags at his face. "None of that," he said firmly. "Jim might be your sire, but this is something _else._ I'll tell you more about it later, but I'm sure you could smell it if you really tried."

After a moment of looking offended, Chekov took a delicate sniff. Confusion tilted his head. "…What is that?" he asked.

"I could tell you," Kit said, a touch smugly.

"Later," McCoy insisted to both of them. He pointed firmly at Spock. "Take Jim into our room. Get him in a blanket, do _not_ go far away from. Some kind of skin contact is best, but if you can't manage that, what with your touch telepathy and whatnot, then just sit by him, snugged up real close. Think positive, welcoming thoughts. He can follow that back to you." He made a series of incomprehensible hand gestures. "Visualize the anchor. _Be_ the anchor. You _are_ the anchor. Get it?"

Spock was unsure how to reply while remaining honest. So instead of attempting to phrase a polite request for clarification, he simple inclined his head, gathered Jim close, rose, and went in the direction of the bedrooms. He kept his stride long and even, as much to comfort Jim as to prevent himself from stepping on Kit as she ran between his ankles.

Jim's bed still had layers of antique comforters, disheveled from his earlier rest. A few books were scattered at its foot, ignored as Spock set Jim down. Kit jumped up beside them, padding her way up to curl among Jim's pillows, right beside his head.

Chekov appeared at Spock's side while he was tucking two of the blankets snugly around Jim. He held out a warm, damp cloth. "For the blood," he said, accent think around a lingering sulk. "Again."

Spock took it with a grateful nod. "Do you know of anything that would make him more comfortable?" he asked.

The vampire blinked in apparent surprise. After a moment of thought, he whisked around the room to close all the curtains. "That will help," he said. "I can see now he is in good hands. Call, though, if you need anything."

"Eventually I would like the story of how Jim, who is not a vampire, came to be your sire." Spock ticked a shoulder. "It can wait."

Chekov chuckled. "It is a good one," he said with a smile. "Stay with Jim and Kit now. I will comm Sulu and catch him up."

"I am where I should be," Spock agreed. "Jim seemed to be under the impression that our window for locating the engineer is closing rapidly. As you leave Jim to my care, I leave that to yours."

"Da," Chekov said, voice low and eyes serious. "We will find him."

Then he was gone—in another rush of wind and movement—and Spock turned his focus back to Jim, sweeping the cloth over that cherished face in what he hoped would not become routine motions. "It is well, Jim," he murmured when the Terran began shifting.

"The dog," Jim sighed, rolling his head so it just touched the warmth of Spock's thigh.

"Dogs're dumb," Kit grumbled, wedging herself more firmly into the curve of Jim's neck and shoulder.

Spock stroked a hand first over Jim's hair, then down Kit's back. He settled in with them, petting a thumb over Jim's forehead to monitor for nightmares, to tempt him back, to offer a harbor amid the Beldam's growing chaos.

And so, together, they waited.

…

"Wait," Sulu demanded into him comm, weaving through the crowds of people inevitably clogging up San Francisco at five o'clock on a weekday. "What do you mean, he had a _seizure?"_

"More like an exorcism, Bones says," Pavel replied. "It only _looked_ like a seizure. Spock and I restrained him—"

" _Spock_?" Sulu stopped walking to stare at his comm in bafflement. He shook his head, then lifted the device again. "Spock is there?"

"Yes. As it turns out, Spock and Uhura were following us in order to find Jim. It is an interesting story. Anyway, Spock followed Jim home from a chance meeting on campus, I think, and was able to pull him out of the Beldam's attack. He is very strong with his mind powers. Also, Bones was thinking maybe you would like to help him dispose of the black sand his exorcism produced."

"I—" Sulu searched for the right response and could only come up with, "Thank him for thinking of me…?"

"He will not care about your thanks, Sulu, but I will pass them along! Further, and more importantly, you must ready yourself to help us with a major project that has a diminishing window of opportunity."

"The engineer?" Sulu guessed.

"Da. Jim and Spock say he is not a cadet, he is an officer. There is a dog associated with him, though I think the dog does not _belong_ to him. It is not a small dog like a Chihuahua, but not a large dog either. Perhaps it is more like—"

"A beagle?" Sulu suggested, beginning to push through the crowd once more.

Pavel fell momentarily silent. "Yes," he said at last, slow with suspicion. "I suppose. But that is a very specific guess, Sulu."

"It's not a guess," Sulu said, closing in on the redheaded engineer attempting to drag a stubborn, unhappy beagle down the sidewalk across the street. "I think I found him, Pavel. I think I see him _right now._ "

"What!" Pavel cried. "But how can you—"

"I'll bring him home and you guys can help me interrogate him, but right now I gotta go before I lose him."

"Hikaru!"

"Later," Sulu insisted, then hung up. He ran to catch the engineer, not sure what he'd say to convince him to come along but determined to kidnap him if it came to that. The engineer didn't look like he spent a lot of time at the gym; no way he'd be a match for a semi-retired monster hunter. "Hey!" he called, repeating himself until the engineer looked up.

"How did ye find me so quickly?" he asked around a thick Scottish accent, more puzzled than upset. "That's a neat trick! I only just took 'em." He looked down at the beagle. "D'you have them set up with trackers?"

Sulu rubbed his forehead, hoping the day would stop being confusing soon. "Look," he said, wrapping a hand around the beagle's leash so the engineer couldn't run, "I know this is going to sound nuts, but I need you to come with me."

"Are you going to charge me?" he asked, finally starting to look nervous. "For stealing the dog? Only, you'll excuse me, lad, but you don't seem old enough. How long've cadets been able to arrest people?"

"What? No." Sulu shook his head. "This isn't about the dog. It's about _you._ My friends and I, we need your help to stop something—" He struggled to find a strong enough word. "Bad. Something awful. It'll happen if you don't help us."

The engineer stared at him. "Am I bein' pranked?" he asked at last.

" _No,_ " Sulu snapped.

"There's no need to be hostile," the engineer said, curiosity beginning to morph into something more stubborn.

Sulu started calculating how to knock him out and drag him home without drawing too much attention.

Someone stepped into the space beside Sulu: Uhura, tucking her comm unit inside her bag. "Please," she said, laying a gentle hand on the engineer's forearm. She gave him a warm, compelling smile when he turned to her. "We need you, Montgomery Scott. There's been a lot of talk about how the Admiralty isn't taking advantage of your innovation properly. Wouldn't you like a chance to prove yourself?"

"Is this a recruitin' speech?" Scott asked, looking slightly dazed.

"Depends." Uhura's smile widened. "Is it working?"

"Very persuasive," Scott agreed, handing the dog's leash to Sulu. "Where're we headed?"

Uhura turned expectantly to Sulu, who rolled his eyes. "Something you don't know?" he asked, feigning surprise.

"I could leave," she offered, one eyebrow arched in challenge.

"Don't," Scott blurted, blush clashing with his hair when they both looked at him. "Sorry," he muttered.

"Don't be," Uhura said, giving him a more assessing once over. "It's nice to be appreciated."

"I'm leaving," Sulu announced, leading the dog down the street toward his apartment.

He heard Uhura and Scott follow him and resolved to get answers out of her eventually.

As soon as they got back to the apartment, Chekov descended on them, so worried that he forgot to check his speed. "Sulu!" he cried, appearing in the doorway just after Sulu pushed it open.

Scott yelped and flinched back into Uhura, who looked vindicated. "I knew it!" she said, pushing Scott into the apartment ahead of her. "I _knew_ you were a vampire!"

Scott twisted around to look at her, weirdly betrayed. " _Vampire_?" he echoed, as wounded as if she'd kicked him. "Is this some kind of _cult_?"

Pavel zipped around behind them to shut the door, locking it for good measure. "It is not a cult," he said. "We are merely friends with a common purpose."

"Not communications track," Uhura teased when Scott paled and pulled away from him, "are you?"

"Command," Pavel said, chest puffing up with pride.

Uhura rolled her eyes. "The rest of you might be intent on scaring poor Lieutenant Scott off before he can help us, but I'm not going to let you." She looped an arm through his. "Let's see if there's any tea in the kitchen."

"Coffee?" he asked hopefully.

"Several kinds," Pavel agreed. "After all, Jim and Bones both live here."

"Bones?" Scott asked suspiciously.

"We're bad at this," Sulu observed to Pavel, who shrugged. He nodded down at the dog. "Let's figure out what to do with this guy."

"He belongs to Admiral Archer," Scott said, ducking with another flush when Sulu and Pavel stared at him incredulously. "I woulda given 'em back!"

"Oh my god," Sulu said, "you _stole_ a _beagle_ from—"

"Never mind," Pavel said, bending down to pick up the dog in one arm. "We are the perfect ones to return him." He held out his free hand. "Come with me?"

Sulu sighed, crowding close so Pavel could get a good grip. "All right. But we'll be back," he threatened the other two.

"Noted," Uhura giggled.

Then Pavel pushed open the sliding door to the balcony and took off, racing across the rooftops of San Francisco on the way to Archer's house, Sulu and beagle in tow.

…

"You're gonna have to explain," Scott said, a little helplessly, when the boys were gone.

Nyota nodded. "I'll do my best," she said. "Although, unless I'm mistaken, there's someone in the kitchen who can help with that better than I can."

McCoy popped his head out of the kitchen, face black with a scowl. "I told you to keep it _down—"_ He blinked, shock replacing anger, only to be almost immediately overtaken by suspicion. "You're that cadet who's been stalkin' Sulu and Pavel all across campus."

"Nyota Uhura," she agreed, crossing the room with her hand stuck out, so confident in her welcome that he was forced to be gracious, even for just a moment. "I didn't mean to be a bother; I was trying to help a friend."

"Spock." McCoy nodded, shaking Nyota's hand thoughtfully. "Turns out you were right to be pushy, actually. He did us all a favor earlier." The doctor eyed Scott. "And you are?"

"In need of a strong drink," Scott said, rubbing a hand over his mouth. "And a long explanation."

Nyota gestured Scott forward. "Chekov called me," she said. "He told me Jim was looking for an engineer with a dog, and that maybe Sulu had found him but could use some help getting him on board. I happened to be nearby, and I've got to admit I'm _really_ curious about all this. Why don't you brew up some coffee and tell us what's going on?"

"This is gonna take a while," McCoy threatened, nevertheless leading them into the kitchen.

No matter where he started the story, or how far back he went, or how many details they made him explain, it felt like McCoy was leaving out something important.

 _Who_ was going to destroy Vulcan? How? What was the plan for stopping him or her or them or it or _whoever._

 _What_ ever?

"How do we even know you're telling the truth?" Scott demanded yet again nearly forty minutes into McCoy's explanation.

McCoy, face washed with rage, picked up his mug as though he would throw it at the doubting Scotsman.

"Bones doesn't lie." Nyota turned to find Jim Kirk in the doorway, Spock at his side as though he'd been born to stand there. A small black cat slipped into the room between their feet, jumping lightly onto the tabletop. Kirk gave the room a dazzling smile. "He's a hedge witch; lying would be too much bad karma for too little payoff."

"Hedge witch?" Uhura asked, studying McCoy curiously.

"Later," McCoy snapped, bustling over to Kirk. He began checking his vitals despite Kirk's annoyed commentary. "How is he?" McCoy asked Spock.

"Hey!" Kirk squawked.

Spock settled his hands at the small of his back. "Stable," he said, "for the present." He cast his gaze over the kitchen. "Is this the engineer?

Scott blinked.

"Yes," Kirk confirmed, mismatched eyes locked on Scott even when he quailed under the force of Kirk's stare. "We can't let you go."

"Have I been kidnapped?" Scott asked uncertainly, glancing around the kitchen. The cat meowed when he looked at her.

Kirk shook his head. "You'll want to come," he said. "We're going after a ship that shouldn't be here. A ship not _from_ here."

"Here as in Earth?" Nyota asked. "Or the Federation?"

"Not from this time," Kirk said, heavy gaze shifting to her. "Not from this _place_."

With a jolt, Nyota realized his darker eye wasn't uniform. There was a pattern of four paler dots where the original blue peeked through whatever birth mark or tattoo colored the rest of it. Somehow, irrationally, the dark eye seemed to glint when Kirk moved his head, like a polished trinket catching the light.

"How will we find the ship, Jim?" McCoy asked, concern in his tone as he tried to catch his friend's eye.

"We'll go toward the hunger," Jim replied with disconcerting cheer.

McCoy's eyes narrowed. " _How."_

Jim clapped a hand on his back. "We're gonna steal a ship."

For the first time, Scott looked interested. "Are we?"

"We're gonna get _court marshaled,"_ McCoy snapped. The cat made a small sound that could have been agreement.

"Strange that you would object," Spock observed. "I was under the impression you had no real wish to explore the galaxy."

McCoy jabbed a finger at him. "Don't you start with me! Do you know how hard it'll be to finish my residency if I get _sent to prison?_ "

"We won't go to prison," Jim said with a roll of his eyes.

"Well…good." McCoy relaxed marginally.

"In all likelihood, we'll just straight-up die."

Although McCoy began cursing immediately, Scott perked up. "Oh, aye? And why's that?"

"Because we're going after the people who destroyed the _Kelvin_ ," Jim said, "and killed my father at the same time. A ship that's spent every day of my life terrorizing the far-reaches of Federation space and beyond. We'll have to find them, sneak aboard, sabotage their engines, foil their plot to destroy Vulcan, and defeat their leader. What do you think?" He grinned. "Wanna hotwire an unstealable starship and save the universe?"

Scott rubbed a hand over his mouth. "Unstealable, you say?"

"Oh no," McCoy said despairingly. "He's an _enabler._ We are _all_ gonna die."

"Likely," Spock agreed, "if Jim has his way. That is why you and I are here, Doctor. We will rein him in."

Chekov appeared in the kitchen, Sulu at his side, in a rush of displaced air. "Pavel caught what you were saying on our way in," Sulu said, eyes glittering with excitement. "I call dibs on piloting."

"I will navigate!" Chekov chirped.

"Nawigate," McCoy muttered. "I'm gonna pack my stuff."

"This is gonna be fun," the cat said.

It took a moment for the reality of that to sink in. Then Nyota and Scott both leapt away from the table—and the cat—with a cry of "A _talking_ **cat**?"

"You owe me twenty credits," the cat said. "Each and every one of you."

"I do not," Spock said.

"Only because you weren't around when we started the betting pool."

"Details," Kirk dismissed, pulling out a PADD to, apparently, transfer the credits in question.

"I'm Kit," the cat said in introduction, tail lashing mischievously.

"I told you she was speech-capable," Spock reminded Uhura.

"It's still surprising to witness in person!"

Scott slid over to Kit, petting a hand over her as though looking for mechanics. "How are you talking?"

"How are you?" she asked, swatting his hand when he got too personal.

"Can I pay you in treats?" Chekov asked. "I am short on credits at the moment."

"I'll accept it," she agreed.

"I really like this place," Scott said, sounding deeply pleased. "Never a dull moment! All right," he told Kirk, "count me in."

"Just like that?" Sulu asked, eyebrows jumping up.

Scott swept a hand through the air in an expansive gesture. "I'm not likely to _ever_ find another adventure like this as long as I live," he said. "I dinnea join Starfleet to stand neatly in place until someone needs me to follow directions. If they're not gonna let me explore their way, well, lad, then I'm sure as hell gonna do it my way."

"Welcome aboard," Sulu said, shaking Scott's hand with an approving smile. "You're gonna fit right in."

"So we've got a hedge witch and a vampire and a whatever Kirk is." Scott grinned at Sulu. "What're you?"

Sulu's posture swelled with pride. "Semi-retired monster hunter."

Scott made a series of impressed and excited noises, followed by demands to hear all about it. Chekov followed them into the living room, either to hear the stories too or add to them in some way. McCoy, Kirk, and the cat—Kit—left, presumably to pack.

Nyota looked up when Spock came to her side. "Well?" he asked, low and without judgement. "Now is the time to leave, if you still wish to make a career in Starfleet. There is likely no going back from this point."

For a long moment, Nyota studied him in silence. "I've been picking up transmissions," she said, crossing her arms. "From Klingon space. There's someone they're referring to as _The Romulan._ He's causing a lot of harm. What I've translated matches up with what Kirk is describing, especially as it concerns the _Kelvin."_ Her expression pinched with worry. "If he thinks they're going after Vulcan, and we could stop that from happening—" Nyota shook her head. "I can't walk away, Spock. Not anymore. I have to help."

"You did not tell me of these transmissions," Spock said.

Nyota shrugged. "I didn't realize they were important. I'll brief the others once we're successfully on our way."

"It will be good to have you with us," Spock acknowledged. "Your mastery of the many Romulan dialects will doubtlessly serve us well."

"And don't you forget it," Nyota teased. She jerked her head back toward the living room. "I'm gonna see if I can get Chekov to run me to my apartment for some necessities."

"I would be happy to," Chekov said, appearing at her elbow.

Nyota flinched away from him, shock driving her heart rate through the roof.

"His hearing is also enhanced," Spock informed her, "as part of his being a vampire."

"It is a curse and a blessing," Chekov agreed, holding out his arms. "Come, I will carry you."

"A true gentleman," Nyota laughed, which turned abruptly into a yelp when Chekov actually _whisked her off her feet_ like she was a princess. "You're so small!" she blurted, arms snapping around his neck so she could hold on for dear life.

"Vampire!" Sulu called from the living room.

"Tell me where you live," Chekov prompted. "We will go and be back before McCoy has even stopped his complaining."

She gave him her address, clinging to him helplessly as he dashed through the city. True to his word, they were back within ten minutes. "Whoa," Nyota said, wobbling a little when Chekov set her down.

"Bit of a head rush," Sulu said with a grin, "right?"

"To say the least," Nyota giggled.

"That's no' fair," Scott complained. "Everyone gets a turn except me- _ee!"_ Scott flailed in Chekov's arms, nearly hitting the vampire's smirking face with his windmilling arms.

"Very cute," Kirk observed dryly from the doorway. "We have something slightly more important to discuss before you go for a joyride, Pavel."

Chekov dumped Scott back into his chair with a sigh. "I know," he said with the saddest pout Nyota had ever seen.

"Is everything all right?" she asked, touching Chekov's shoulder with concern.

"It's logistics," Kit said from her spot lounging in the longest windowsill. "Pavel doesn't run on cuteness alone. He's a vampire too. We're gonna need to figure out food for him, and contingencies if this goes longer than a few days."

Nyota felt herself pale, then shook herself angrily. If Sulu and Kirk and McCoy could live with Pavel for years without any incident of him going crazy for their blood, so could Nyota. "Is there anything I can do to help?" she asked, chin lifted. "If there is, I want to do it."

All of Chekov's friends smiled at her with varying degrees of gratitude. "He doesn't need a lot," McCoy admitted, then jerked his head at Sulu. "More'n the two of us can provide safely, though. With three of us—"

"Four," Scott cut in.

"Four," McCoy amended with a faint smile, "we can easily get on a rotation that doesn't leave anyone feeling light headed."

Nyota hesitated before saying, "Sorry if this is rude, but why doesn't Kirk—"

Kirk held up a hand to quiet the protests of his friends. "It's a good question," he acknowledged. "This isn't decorative," he continued, gesturing at his dark left eye. "I was a dumb kid, and I made a trade I shouldn't have. This eye is my punishment. It taints me through and through, blood included. I could donate, and Pavel could eat it, but it'd taint him too. Last thing we need is for our best and brightest to go dark side."

"You were not dumb," Spock argued, laying a hand on Kirk's shoulder. "You were manipulated."

"Some other time," Kirk said, warm smile at odds with his tone.

"Anyway," Kit interrupted, standing from her perch with a mighty stretch, "I saved him then, and Spock'll save him later, so it doesn't even matter."

Kirk looked ready to debate that, but McCoy got in his way, stuffing Kirk's pockets with several small bags. "We'll keep 'em fresh," he said in a manner that suggested deep bodily harm to Kirk if he refused.

"So what ship are we stealing?" Sulu asked before an argument could break out. "I can pilot almost anything." He turned to Scott. "Suggestions?"

Scott's eyes went dreamy.

It took them nearly an hour to get him to commit to one: a small ship meant for deep-space transports, not sturdy enough for long-term exploration, but top of the line and manageable for a skeleton crew like theirs. There were only five of them in use.

"Unstealable," Scott told Kirk with a level of glee unsuitable for their mission.

Kirk, crazy in all the right ways, threw his head back to laugh. "Let's do it," he said.

And, somehow, they did.

* * *

Three days later, they found it. The _Narada_. It hung in the black between stars like a creature out of the deepest crush of a Terran sea. Sharp, elongated spines reached out from its main body, thorny tentacles waiting for prey. It looked nothing like a Federation vessel, nor any known model from any of their enemies.

According to Jim, it was out of place, out of _time,_ an aberration bent on chaos.

"Why doesn't it see us?" Chekov whispered into the hush of their stolen ship's bridge. He and Sulu sat at the main navigation terminal, Sulu working the helm while Chekov plotted their course.

"It probably isn't looking," Uhura answered in a tone matched to Chekov's. "Look at the size of it. What could a ship like ours possibly do to it?"

"Not very smart," Sulu muttered, passing his hands over his terminal as he slowed their progress to nearly a halt. "If those Klingon messages you intercepted are really about these guys, they should be on high alert. The Klingons could send a ship our size for recon. Even this monstrosity couldn't stand up to an _armada._ "

"You're thinking too clearly," Jim said, standing in the middle of the bridge where he could keep an eye on his people. The ship, even one this size, had a captain's chair. It was tucked high and back behind all the other stations, able to look out but not with a wide enough view to encompass the little communications terminal where Uhura sat, or the science station squeezed into the opposite corner where Spock ran his reports. Kit sat on the chair in Jim's stead, small but regal, watching the humans with the unmoving poise of her people.

Jim stepped forward to rest one hand on the back of Chekov's seat. "The epicenter of this isn't _rationality._ It's hate. Revenge. An unyielding, reckless devotion to inflicting as much pain to as many people as possible." Light glinted off the button eye as a smile turned one corner of Jim's mouth. "What makes sense isn't the important thing. Survival is already forfeit. All that matters now is doing the most damage possible until someone, somewhere, takes them down."

Spock left his station to approach Jim. He did not touch their temporary captain; Jim's body language did not appear open for casual touch. Instead, he stood close by Jim's right shoulder, looking out through the forward view screen. "It would take hundreds of individuals to properly staff such a vessel. What is our plan for stopping it?"

Jim rubbed his chin, not in thought so much as though he didn't know quite how to phrase his response. "The ship isn't..." He shook his head. "None of this is what it looks like. I'm not sure explaining it would make sense. Worse, explaining might make winning harder. Words have power, they affect perception. If I explain, some of what we're seeing might break, and what we're seeing might be important later. Whoever goes with me will have to put a lot of effort into doing what I say even if it doesn't seem to make sense."

"Can do," Sulu said at the same time Chekov replied, "Of course, Captain." They grinned at each other.

"I, also, will be going," Spock informed Jim. "You will not be able to talk me out of it. I suggest we create our plan with a four-member away team in mind."

"Hey," Uhura objected, "maybe I want to go, too!"

"You'd be more useful here," Jim said, shrugging with an apologetic expression when Uhura glared at him.

"Why? I should get to be part of the adventure too, if we're all gonna die or be court-marshaled! Let's all just go out together."

Jim shook his head. "Bones is staying here to prepare in case one of us gets, like, impaled or whatever. Medical emergency. Scott is staying to keep the engines warm. You'd do us more good here, monitoring for any changes and keeping us updated. Pavel's a vampire. Sulu is a professional monster hunter. Warriors are going to be vital on the _Narada,_ so it helps us more if they come."

"And Spock?" Sulu asked.

"I am a touch telepath," Spock said. "My skills in the mind meld might save a life, or help locate a necessary person or place. It is only right I join the away team."

"Plus there's your obsession with Jim," Kit chirped, "and not being willing to let him out of your sight ever again." She bared her fangs in a grin when Spock turned to arch an eyebrow at her. "Pet my fur forward if I'm lying."

Jim rolled his eyes. "Dramatic," he said, then shook his head. "Anyway, Spock's right, his telepathy will almost definitely be useful." He gestured to the button in his eye. "You know why I'll be going."

"Very well thought out," Uhura acknowledged.

"Only if it works," Jim said.

"How will we get aboard the ship?" Spock asked, partially because they needed to know and partially to redirect Jim from the doubts and concerns beginning to build in his eyes. "Once aboard, what is our goal? To disable the engines? To plant explosives? If the latter, I do not think we brought the correct supplies."

"It's not gonna be that hard," Jim said, gaze growing distant. "You'll be with me, Spock. Our mission will be to disable the ship. Sulu and Chekov will be looking for captives. The ship isn't supposed to be here; reality wants it gone. It's held here by a linchpin. Once Pavel and Sulu are sure the ship doesn't have any bystanders aboard, you and I can find and pull the pin. We'll probably have enough time to get away before it totally collapses, but that's also why we're all wearing suits and helmets, in case life support fails unexpectedly."

"Did we pack suits and helmets?" Sulu wondered. He did not display the usual concern such a question should evoke in an average Terran.

"Do I need one too?" Chekov asked instead of attempting to answer his friend's question.

"Still not seeing how we sneak onto a ship that size," Uhura said.

The comm crackled into life on the command chair where Kit was lounging. "Engines to bridge," Scott called.

Jim walked back to the chair, pressing the comm button on the arm without moving Kit. "This is Kirk," he replied. "Go ahead."

"Would you like me to reroute to the overhead, Captain?" Uhura asked, amusement warming her eyes. "If you don't mind us all listening in, it'd prevent you from having to keep that button depressed."

"Please do," Jim said with a grin.

"Having a communications expert is nice," Kit observed through a yawn.

"Here's the thing," Scott continued as though he'd heard none of the others talking, which seemed about as likely as if he were simply ignoring them. "This ship runs well, has a solid little engine back here, and I'm sure she can do whatever you ask of her. Except, 'scuse me, sir, I'm not quite sure what it is your doctor friend is asking. I'd rather not throw grass and rocks into the works if we can help it, t'be honest."

"Throwing in _grass!"_ came the unmistakable shriek of an insulted Dr. McCoy. "Rocks! Why I _never_ in my _life-"_

"Bones," Jim said, attempting to interrupt the building diatribe. "Bones. Bones!"

"Do you have _any idea_ the kind of _history_ and _heritage_ I have put into-"

"If the doctor is too busy with his fit to assist us," Spock suggested, "perhaps we would be best served in going on without him."

Dead, ominous silence rang in response. "What did you say," McCoy said in a dangerous tone.

Uhura flipped a switch on her station. "You're surprisingly good at that," she said.

"You will have to be more specific," Spock replied with a blank expression.

"He tries to be low-key about it," Kit said to Uhura, "but actually he's just had a lot of practice manipulating Jim. Anyone else is pretty easy after that."

Jim barked a laugh. "Just like old times." He gestured toward the ceiling. "Never mind the sassy cat and Vulcan routine, Uhura. Let me talk to them again, please."

Uhura turned communications back on.

"Spock didn't mean anything by it," Jim said. "I'm sure Scotty didn't either. What seems to be the actual problem?"

"You asked me to make us unremarkable to Other-sight," McCoy snapped, "so that's what I'm doing. Except _someone_ isn't taking this shit seriously and keeps pulling down my protections!"

"And did you tell him you're a hedge witch plying your trade?" Jim asked, one arm crossed while the other hand rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Or did you just start putting your stuff in the right nooks and crannies of an Other-marked _mundane engineer?"_

"Don't you pretend to be the reasonable one in this relationship," McCoy said, words underscored by a faint rattling, as though he was shaking something in his hands at Jim even with the entire ship between them.

"What's a hedge witch?" Scott asked hesitantly.

"I will handle this," McCoy said. "Engine room out."

"So," Jim said into the silence left behind. "That's how we're sneaking aboard."

"Hedge witchery?" Chekov said with a dubious glance at Sulu, who shrugged at him.

"It sounds like small-time magic," Sulu said, "but it's not. You don't wanna mess with hedge witches, they've got the Earth on their side. If he says his materials can make it so the Other creatures aboard the alien ship won't notice us, then he can."

"He can," Jim assured them. "I gave him my siren boon, you remember, Sulu, from that one hunt? He used it to juice up some old McCoy charms, which, y'know, the McCoys go back practically forever. That stuff was already powerful."

"We're set," Sulu told Chekov with a firm nod.

Chekov smiles. "Then I am ready."

"You want me to start the approach?" Sulu asked, turning in his seat to address Jim.

"Not yet," their captain said. "We wait for word from Bones."

It took the doctor twenty additional minutes to finish his preparations. In that time, they drifted beside the _Narada_ , acclimating to its presence. Uhura stayed at constant work, head cocked as she focused on her earpiece while her fingers flew over her station's controls. Spock felt an impulse to ask what she was doing, but resisted: She would not be so hard at work if it were not important.

Perhaps she was trying to pick up communications from within the _Narada,_ or else attempting to increase security on their own internal systems. Either way, her work would be vital.

He left her to her focus.

Chekov and Sulu bent their heads close together, talking under their breaths. Jim, likely, could not hear them. Spock could. They discussed strategy, how Chekov's vampire abilities might help them locate any hostages or prisoners, or else alert them to approaching enemies. Chekov wanted to devise a method for keeping track of Jim. Leaving his sire in uncertain circumstances went against every instinct Chekov had.

Sulu talked him out of it, reminding him of the myriad ways Jim was a dangerous man not in need of a vampire babysitter. "Remember that time we all got caught," Sulu said in a tone of great fondness, "and nearly eaten, and Jim made them let us go through the power of guilt?"

"They swore to be vegetarians from that day forward," Chekov agreed. "So unusual, for yeti."

Spock made a mental note to ask Jim more about that later.

For now, he turned to his situational captain. "I believe it would serve us well to have a plan," he said, low so only Jim and Chekov could hear.

"I don't know how to make one," Jim admitted, sitting on the arm of the command chair. Kit twisted over on her back so she could swat lazily at the hem of his shirt. "It's really going to depend on what the linchpin is."

"You have an idea about it though," Kit said.

Jim hesitated.

Spock reached out to brush two fingers over the side of Jim's neck. "Will you not tell me?"

"I don't know how important it is for you to not know," Jim said, stretching his neck unconsciously to bare more of it to Spock's touch. "Judging on how that thing looks, I'd guess it's a person. Objects can't hold purpose through the kind of event it'd take to do that to a ship."

"It is not an aesthetic design," Spock said, glancing back over his shoulder to look at the ship through their view screen. In fact, the ship seemed built to intimidate: the leading spines could serve no purpose not better accomplished by a more sleek model. That did not make the ship necessarily the sort to be described as _how that thing looks._ "What about it stands out as ruined?"

"I don't know if I can tell you," Jim said, yet again. "I don't know how much belief in how it looks matters."

"If it is a matter of preference," Spock said, "I would prefer to go in knowing the truth of it. Perhaps you might show me as a test."

"A test?" Jim tracked Spock's movements as he came around to stand before his captain. "Are you suggesting something reckless, Spock?"

"Don't sound surprised," Kit protested. "Recklessness isn't something you can, like, _call dibs_ on. Everyone gets to be reckless if they want. Even Vulcans. In fact!" She sat up, tail swishing behind her. "It's probably _your_ influence making him be like this in the first place."

"You are attempting to derail the conversation with another one," Spock point out. He reached down to stroke her head. "That is kind, on Jim's behalf, but I recognize the tactic. It will not work." He stepped more squarely in front of Jim, lifting one hand to cup a cool Terran cheek. "Tell me what is wrong, and from there we will gauge if the others need to know."

"The ship is broken," Jim said, blue eyes locked with brown. "In my vision, it's a ghost ship. I think whatever brought it through to our reality destroyed it. It shouldn't be operational."

"But the crew," Spock protested.

Kit looked out into the darkness. "There isn't a crew," she said, still and regal the way she always was when stepping into the Other world she seemed half born into. "Not anymore."

Spock prepared himself with the knowledge they'd given him, then turned to face the ship. He believed them, deeply, right down to the core of himself where the heat of his people and the love of his family lived.

The ship was unchanged. Knowing it for what it was did not seem to have any impact on how it presented itself.

"That's weird," Jim said when Spock reported his findings. "So I guess it wouldn't hurt to tell the others?"

"Can't see how it'd help either," Kit pointed out. "Pavel hasn't said anything, so whatever's holding this...vision together is _powerful._ How would it help them to know? If they can't see even once you tell them, it doesn't matter."

"Even so," Spock said, "I would see."

"How?" Kit demanded, beginning to sound frustrated.

"Jim can see. _You_ can see. Surely there's a way for me to as well."

"So go back in time and be born a cat," she snapped, "or fight and kill a Beldam after you give it access to your very _soul-"_

"You've got a shitty temper," Jim noted, picking Kit up for a cuddle she struggled against. "It's not Spock's fault he wants to see. That's kind of who he is as a person."

"Who he is is _stupid,"_ she spat, finally squirming out of Jim's hold. "He wants to hurt himself to see? To hurt _you?_ Fine. But I'm not sticking around for it." She stalked off the bridge, presumably in search of either McCoy or a quiet spot to sulk.

"I have offended her."

Jim shook his head, still looking in the direction she'd gone. "No. She's worried."

"That I might hurt myself or you." Spock nodded. "It is a reasonable fear, although she must know I would do neither willingly."

"Sometimes hurting people happens without the intent. Doesn't mean it didn't hurt." He offered Spock a half smile, one that tried to warm his sky blue eye without any success. The button seemed to deepen in its darkness, drawing in all the light Jim produced so naturally. Spock reached out, thoughtless, to take Jim's hand in his, stroking a thumb over his knuckles in a motion Jim might not have considered casual if he spent more time studying Vulcan biology. Regardless, Jim's smile warmed. He squeezed Spock's hand, ignorant of the way it made Spock's heart thunder in his side. "I don't think this would hurt though. Do you really want to see?"

"I wish to know your world," Spock said, fighting to keep his voice even. "The aspects of it that are lovely; the aspects that are cruel. Whatever is true for you, I wish to be true for me as well."

"There might be a way to show you, since telling didn't work." He gestured at his forehead with his free hand. "You've seen through me before, haven't you?"

"You wish to meld."

"Lightly," Jim agreed. "Just enough so you can tap into the layer the Beldam strips from the world. If you can see, and it sticks, and it seems important, maybe we can figure out a way to pass it along to the others, too."

"Passing it along" would likely require Spock to act as a bridge between Jim's mind and the others'. He would not. If the others had the natural ability to explore Jim's mind, Spock would have no right to demand Jim refuse them. As they did not, it was well within Spock's prerogative to decline opening his own mind in the process of sharing Jim's.

Still, it was generous of Jim to suggest it. "Let us try first," Spock said, touching Jim's psy-points with the hand not wrapped around Jim's. "To see if it will work." Jim shut his eyes, face tilted into Spock's hand. He filtered through Spock, heat and searing cold, welcome and hunger, layers of longing and protection and interest all underscored by the Beldam's ravenous webs.

Instead of delving deep, Spock pulled Jim into him, a gossamer film of his power to lay over Spock's own senses. Once he felt sure the layer would hold, Spock opened his eyes and looked.

The ship was a wreck, hanging in pieces connected by twisted metal and wires that sparked uselessly into the empty space around them. The whole central portion of the ship looked cracked like an egg, warped by some force until it splintered and burst. In atmosphere, the hulking, ruined thing would fall instantly apart, groaning through its rightful death. Kit was correct: no living being could be on the ship. Life support would have been among the first systems to be rendered useless when the hull was breached.

Spock withdrew his hand from Jim. The ship shuddered in his sight, flickering between what the spell or enchantment projected and the truth of its state until all he could see was the lie. "We must be touching for the button's power to show me what is true," Spock said. He turned back to Jim, tucking his hands at the small of his back to hide their building tremble. "There would be no function in showing the others, as it is not sustainable. However, I must strongly insist we wear spacesuits at all times when aboard the _Narada._ No matter how powerful this enchantment is, it cannot sustain organic beings in what is functionally open space."

"Good point," Jim said, focus shifting to the view screen. "Maybe seeing it as it is would only be intimidating anyway. It might be better this way."

Better that only Spock touched the core of Jim's power? Not only was it better, it was...logical. "Does this ship have enough equipment for all of us?"

"More than," Jim agreed. He reached over the arm of the command chair to draw up ship's schematics. A few dexterous flicks of his fingers highlighted and expanded the main cargo hold. "This vessel is mandated to have enough emergency equipment to account for a full crew. We're, maybe, a tenth of that. There will be storage compartments here." He poked at a small bay of lockers along the far wall. "Full suits, helmets, spare oxygen, the works. Once Bones gives us the go ahead, I'll have Sulu set a course, then we'll all head down to suit up. I don't think Pavel actually needs a suit," he admitted, "but I'll have him wear one anyway."

"A precaution?"

Jim laughed under his breath. "Solidarity. Or camouflage. I don't want him to stand out any more than he will just by virtue of, like, being able to fling the Romulans around."

"Perhaps they will assume he is Vulcan," Spock mused.

"You could fling Romulans around?" Jim eyed Spock with a type of speculation that made Spock's blood warm inappropriately. "Well isn't that... _interesting_." Spock felt an unfamiliar urge to smirk tug at one corner of his mouth.

"Knock that shit off right now," McCoy snapped, storming onto the bridge with Kit curled in his arms. "We've got more important things to do than watch you two idiots _flirt._ "

"I do not think there is any point in protesting it," Chekov observed from his station with an air of deep serenity. "Instead, do as we do: Get in on the betting pool on the ground floor."

McCoy's chortle drown out Jim's gasp of outrage. "What're the odds?"

"They're gonna get together," Sulu said even while he entered the approach coordinates. "The bets are about how, when, details, etc. Anything you want to bet on, there's gonna be someone to bet against."

"Why have I not heard about this before?" Uhura demanded, swiveling in her chair to glare at them.

"We did not think you would have an interest," Chekov admitted with a shrug. "You have not known Jim long at all, certainly not long enough to care about his love life."

"Ew," Kit said. "But also I want in."

"I haven't known Jim long," Uhura agreed, "but I _have_ known Spock. I want in too!"

"This feels deeply disloyal," Jim observed to Spock.

"Y'all're gross," McCoy told him, walking over to Sulu and Chekov so they could show him their betting program.

"Right?" Kit chirped.

"If you want us to stop speculatin' about what all's-" He gestured vaguely in their direction. "-goin' on, then maybe consider not hashin' out your burnin' sexual attraction in public. This is a bad sheet," he added to Chekov, shifting Kit to one arm so he could point at the gambling document the young navigator had produced. "It won't hold up when things get more complicated."

"I think it is very good,"

"It is wery good," McCoy agreed with a faintly amused expression. "For when it was just the two of you, and maybe Kit, and occasionally me, gettin' in on things. Now that there's more, it won't stand up. 'Specially not with a bet this complicated."

"How do you know?" Chekov demanded, lips pulling back from his elongating teeth in what looked like a subconscious response to McCoy's challenge.

The doctor dug in his pocked absently for a moment before throwing a handful of something directly into Chekov's face. He coughed and sputtered, swatting ineffectually at his nose. "Better?" McCoy asked once Chekov calmed down.

"Yes," he said with a distinct pout.

"Not that this isn't entertaining," Sulu said, finally looking up from his station, "but we're at less than ten minutes to docking. I've pointed us at what I think should be an empty holding bay."

"How can you know that it's empty?" Uhura asked curiously.

Sulu pulled up a display of the _Narada_ to point at one of the outermost arms. "It's out of the way, which increases its difficulty to access and increases its chances of being unused except in circumstances where they're really busy." He gestured toward the view screen. "Whatever their initial mission, they're not doing it now. They almost certainly aren't running a full crew anymore, even if they were before coming here from...wherever. So this is as safe a bet as we're getting. Eight minutes," he added to Jim.

"Clever," Chekov said, beaming at his friend.

"Tactics," Sulu and Jim chorused together. They shared a grin.

Spock wrapped his fingers around the delicate skin of Jim's wrist, pulling at the sense of him while looking out the view screen. The ship crumbled again, faster this time, like a veil torn away from his eyes. Spock looked for the area of the ship Sulu mentioned, intending to make certain it still existed, despite the ruin in more of the vessel's extremities.

Jim's closed his free hand over Spock's forearm with a gentle squeeze. "I would have said something," he murmured, "if it wasn't there."

"Seven minutes," Sulu called.

"Let's go," Jim said. He nodded to McCoy. "You'll stay here with Uhura? Monitor our progress?"

"Your _inevitable doom,_ more like," he grumbled, crossing over to sit in the command chair with Kit in his lap.

"They don't have permission to be doomed," Uhura said, fingers flying over her station. "We've got a bet. They can't die or disappear or be eaten or whatever until we settle up." She pulled a set of four earpiece communicators from a lower drawer in her station, fiddling with them for a moment before standing to pass them out among their little away team. "Don't take them out," she instructed as they dutifully tucked them in their ears. "I'm monitoring your frequencies."

McCoy looked intrigued. "Handy. Where did those come from?"

"The communications department," Uhura said primly, and would not explain further.

"This is a good crew," Jim laughed, touching one finger to the potentially stolen tech in his ear. "I'm liking the dedication to, y'know, survival."

"It's a new experience for you," Kit snarked, curling her tail around her forepaws, "but I'm glad you're enjoying it so far."

Jim pointed a finger in her direction but didn't actually protest.

"Let's go," Sulu prompted from where he stood by the turbo lift. "Ideally we should be aboard the ship and working on our missions within the first few minutes of docking. That's basic protocol for invading an enemy vessel."

"Infiltrating," Jim stressed.

"That is covered in protocol?" Chekov asked, sounding surprised and intrigued as he followed Sulu off the bridge.

"Everything has a protocol," Sulu said, ushering him forward. "It just depends on how closely we stick to it."

"Not at all," Jim said. "My vote is for _we follow it not at all._ If we do this by the books, we'll lose the element of surprise!"

"Are you suggesting," Spock said, rounding out their team in the turbo lift and selecting the lower bay as their destination, "there is any aspect of this mission-a ship our size, from a people who should not know of the _Narada_ to begin with, infiltrating a vessel of that size with only four crew-that is _not_ surprising?"

"Point," Jim acknowledged. "Still. Let's not get boring _now._ We're too close to the important part."

Sulu and Chekov both opened their mouths to call his semantics into question, which Spock forestalled by urging the group of them out into the open space of the cargo bay. "If we might focus," he prompted. The lockers Jim indicated on the readout earlier did, indeed, contain an assortment of suits and helmets. As was typical for Starfleet, the suits bore either red, blue, or yellow stripes along certain seams, likely chosen for aesthetic rather than functional purposes. Spock selected one for himself in blue, then chose a second-gold-for Jim.

Who was already unzipping a red-seamed suit.

"You are in the command track," Spock reminded him, holding out the gold-striped suit.

"Yes but I'm currently a cadet," Jim replied while kicking off his boots. "Cadets wear red."

"We are not wearing red," Chekov said, happily wriggling into his command-themed outfit. Sulu did the same beside him.

"This is definitely not a cadet-sanctioned mission," Sulu said. He fastened the high collar of his suit before beginning to do stretches, presumably to help the ensemble settle more comfortably. Then he produced a rapier and began fencing with imaginary enemies, presumably because Terrans were...unique in their adaptive behaviors.

Chekov encouraged his suit to lie properly by doing laps of the room that the human eye could not follow. Even Spock could not quite keep track of him.

"Showoffs," Jim said fondly. "One of you make yourself useful and find some phasers for us to use. I don't want us going in there without any way of protecting ourselves."

"Wear the gold suit," Chekov said, appearing beside his sire with a sweet, eager expression and arms full of weapons. "This may be the only chance we get, depending on how it goes. We could die, after all."

"Or worse," Sulu agreed. "Get court-marshaled." He finally collapsed and sheathed his sword, threading a phaser in its holster beside it on his tactical belt.

Jim rolled his eyes while taking the command suit from Spock and a phaser from Chekov. "Fine."

By the time they were ready, helmets in place, their ship's automated systems had docked them with the _Narada._ Sulu entered in a series of commands at the door that should have worked but did not actually open the door. Jim suggested the door might be stuck on something.

"We're not getting a reading for interference," Sulu protested even as he stepped aside. Chekov filled his space, bracing his shoulder against the door. He gave it a vampire-strength shove.

The door popped open. Air hissed from their ship into the one stretching out before them.

"We're getting a pressure reading error up here," Uhura said in their ears. "I can't see a breach or anything to explain it, but we should get that door closed, just in case."

They stepped through as a unit. Chekov kicked the door shut.

The hallway they now stood in looked rusted with age and disuse. Judging by that alone, it seemed safe to assume few of the _Narada_ 's crew came down here anymore. They might be safe here.

They also might be- What was the Terran phrase?

Sitting ducks.

"Stay quiet as you can," Jim murmured, looking down the hallway toward the left. "I can't see anything important here. Let's go on a little further together, then we can split up."

"When you say _see,"_ Sulu began.

Chekov nudged an elbow into his side. "This is not quiet as you can, Sulu. We know what he means by now."

Spock looked again at Jim, both his eyes locked into a middle distance, and thought that not seeing anything important did not mean not seeing _anything._

There was no purpose in the observation, so he kept it to himself. He followed where Jim went, silent in his shadow, preparing himself for the confrontations to come.

Which were not, of course, anything he could actually have prepared for.

…

Sulu and Pavel were meant to find the prisoner. Jim had known one was on the ship; the whole thing was a type of dead and dark that let the light of the living shine like a beacon to those who knew how to look for it. So he knew someone was on the ship. Jim's job, however, was to find and pull the linchpin, whoever that ended up being. Pavel could take pretty much any supernatural being in a fight, but this-

This was something else. It felt nearly like a genie wish, though it lacked the usual twist. Or, well, if it had a twist, Jim couldn't see it yet. Regardless, this was big. A type of big that would be unfair to throw at Pavel.

So Pavel would find the prisoner, and Jim would find the pin.

Then Jim found the prisoner.

Who was Spock.

Or, well, who _said_ he was Spock. A different Spock, from a different time. Which explained...

Well.

Nothing.

"It would be easier," the old Vulcan said, lifting a hand, "to show you."

"Out of the question." Spock-his Spock- _this_ Spock stepped between Jim and the other...the...

The Spocks faced off.

"You must remain in your suit," here-Spock said, ignoring his counterpart to keep his eyes locked with Jim's. "Therefore, a meld would be impossible."

"We could bring him with us back to the ship," Jim pointed out, strangely delighted by the frustration and flat refusal he saw building in here-Spock's eyes: He wanted to continue decrying the meld but could not (yet) come up with a good excuse for it.

 _In_ teresting.

"Fascinating," other-Spock mused, watching them interact with something like fondness. "I am curious as to how you have come to know each other so well so young. I did not meet my Jim for several years yet. Although I see you are already in command, Jim-that, at least, is similar. How did you find me? I should not be surprised that you somehow managed to talk Starfleet around to supporting whatever plan brought you here, and yet I find myself unable to account for it."

Jim tried to put together a coherent response to all the ways other-Spock was wrong but what came out was nearly hysterical laughter.

Here-Spock, naturally, took responsibility for the corrections, ticking points off one finger at a time. "Jim and I met many years ago, as children."

"Teenagers," Jim wheezed.

"We parted for a time," Spock continued, ignoring his amendment, "then I was able to find him once more only a few days ago. We are still cadets. I am in the science track, Jim is in command. He wears gold at the urging of his companions, not out of adherence to uniform protocol. We did not come for you; we came for the _Narada_ , which is set to destroy Vulcan. Our mission is to stop that from happening. It is not a mission assigned to us by Starfleet. Likely, we will be court-marshaled and perhaps jailed for the unauthorized use of a Federation ship. It was Sulu and Chekov's task to find you, not ours." Spock folded his hands at the small of his back, turning a little to face Jim. "My recommendation is to continue on toward our goal and alert the others of the prisoner's location."

"Not a bad idea," Jim agreed, trying to put together the right facial expression so other-Spock would think he was leaving reluctantly and not with a sense of relief. "Sulu and Pavel can-"

"I do not understand," other-Spock interrupted, brow creased with an incredible display of emotion, for a Vulcan. "How did you come to know each other? What cause did Spock have to find you in _Iowa?"_

One of here-Spock's eyebrows ticked up. "Iowa?"

Jim glanced at him and then away. His mouth pulled into a thin line. "Don't really wanna talk about that."

"Please." Other-Spock lifted his hand again. "This is my doing. Allow me to see what changes I caused by coming here."

"The _Narada_ caused the changes," here-Spock said, stepping further between Jim and the older Vulcan. "It is egotistical of you to state otherwise."

"You say that because you do not understand," other-Spock insisted.

"Regardless, Jim has decided he does not wish to speak of it. You will respect his boundaries."

"Of course," other-Spock said, irritation crackling under the words. "That you would suggest otherwise only serves to indicate how little you trust yourself."

"I know my mind well enough to guess the ways in which it might break, separated as you are from your Jim. I know better than to assume you would retain perfect control if offered the opportunity to meld with him again."

So apparently they were going to escalate. Perfect.

Jim looked around the cell, checking it with both eyes for breaches. Even the decay of the actual ship didn't seem to have caused any structural damage here. The old man might know something that could help. Anyway, he seemed unwilling to let them pass without sharing some kind of information.

Before his Spock could stop him, Jim removed his helmet.

"Jim!" here-Spock cried.

Other-Spock reached for him, touching his face and his mind in the same motion. "What has happened to your eye?" he murmured, running a thumb under the button.

"Here's a tip I'll need you to follow if we're gonna do this," Jim said instead of answering. "Do not look into me. Okay? You can get the surface stuff, but don't go deep. We don't have the time for it. Tell me what you need to say, what we'll need to know, and then I have to leave. We'll send Sulu and Pavel for you, okay? You can wait for me on our ship." He tilted his face into Spock's hold. "Do it."

Within a heartbeat, he did.

Jim paid only cursory attention to other-Spock's presence ( _what a relief to see you again old friend_ ) in his mind. Instead, he used what here-Spock had taught him in their few ( _another has touched your mind-Spock-but why_ ) melds to seek answers. Not about the _Narada_ , or other-Spock's guilt, or even too much on the red matter other-Spock felt certain Nero ( _a very troubled Romulan_ ) would use to destroy Vulcan ( _how can you know he will do it Jim why are you so certain_ ). He looked for hints that could lead them ( _already you think of yourself and Spock as one I am so relieved but how is it so Jim how did he find you)_ to the linchpin. It was hard to use Other ( _other?_ ) sight in memories; Jim thought maybe he could do it better with practice ( _you will let him teach you so intimately? How did you convince him?)_ . For now, he did his best, seeking a clue to point them in the right direction. ( _I do not understand Jim what has happened I do not_

 _what is the beldam)_

"Better not," Jim said, turning his head away from other-Spock's touch to break the meld. When other-Spock tried to follow, instinct and curiosity driving his reach, Jim caught his wrist. "Don't look," he said, as kindly as he could while still being utterly firm. "I saw enough to understand how different he was. Your Jim. I didn't pry, but you were projecting pretty hard. Everything was different for me, right from the start. Okay? We can talk about it later. Right now, we have a mission. I'll send Sulu and Pavel to take you back to the ship. After that, we'll talk. Or-well." He gave other-Spock's arm a squeeze he hoped was comforting. "We'll figure it out."

"Jim," other-Spock protested, "I do not-"

"I know," Jim said. "But right now, what I need is for you to trust me. Can you do that? I know I'm not him, not in the ways that matter. Will you trust me anyway?"

Now-Spock stepped close by Jim's side, left shoulder tucked neatly behind Jim's right. Even though he couldn't see Spock's expression, Jim felt pretty confident he could guess what it would look like: dark with possession, threatening beneath the serenity he tried to maintain at all times.

Other-Spock finally stepped back. "Always, Jim." He folded his hands at the small of his back. "Though I wish to join you, to aid you once more as I did long ago, I see it will not be necessary. I will not," he added to his counterpart, "have to stress how important it is that you stay with him."

"Ridiculous," here-Spock said, not quite a scoff but close enough to count. "You cannot know the years I spent seeking to be at his side again. I would not throw it over now, not even for myself. You have had your opportunity. It is mine now."

"Just so."

"Can we go?" Jim asked, annoyed and strangely touched by their shared protectiveness. A common trait in all Spocks, apparently. "We're looking at, like, kind of a time crunch here."

"Certainly," now-Spock said. "I assumed you would indicate readiness to proceed by re-affixing your helmet and was merely waiting for you to do so."

"I can tell you where my ship is, if you did not see for yourself," other-Spock added. "I do not think they will have had the technological capabilities-or courage-to remove the red matter to the _Narada_ itself."

"Red matter?" now-Spock asked Jim.

Jim held up both hands. "Later," he said to his own Spock. And, "Thanks, but that's not my goal. You've put together an excellent mundane explanation, which would be great if these were mundane Romulans, but they're not, so it's not, so we gotta go."

"Mundane?" other-Spock asked.

"Later," Jim said again. He put his helmet back on, waiting for it to signal that his suit was sealed before gesturing to the door. "Let's go."

"Affirmative," his Spock agreed, leading the way back out into the hall.

Jim sent Sulu and Pavel their current coordinates with a brief message about how maybe they wanted to try that location next. _You're taking all the fun out of this,_ Sulu sent back. "They'll be here soon," Jim told other-Spock. "We disabled the alarm when we broke in, but if you want to make scary alarm noises when Sulu and Pavel get here, I won't say no to that."

"Goodbye, Jim," other-Spock said, amusement faint in his tone. He lifted his hand in a splayed gesture. "I will see you again soon."

"Sure thing." Jim made a finger-gun at him and then shut the door. "Jeez. Okay. Let's do this."

"Later," Spock said while following him down the hall, "you will explain to me why you thought it appropriate to gamble with your well-being by removing your helmet."

"Eh," Jim said, instead of "how 'bout no".

"Do you know more about the linchpin now?"

"I know who it isn't," Jim agreed. "I'll know more about who it isn't once we actually find some Romulans, seriously, where is everyone?"

At about that time, a two-person patrol came around the corner. Jim flinched away from them, unable to resist that initial impulse, but better prepared to tamp down on the urge to _eat_ them, they looked _so-_

Spock struck before Jim could consider his next move, disabling their opponents with a couple of neck pinches that looked really useful to know how to do. Once the Romulans were heaped on the floor and unable to sound the alarm, Jim tried to figure out what to do with them.

"Were we in a safer location," Spock said while they dragged the unconscious (well, kind of) bodies into a nearby storage closet, "and I were not wearing this suit, I could check their memories for the location of important personnel. Do you think this closet would protect me if I took off my suit?"

"The linchpin doesn't have to be a higher up," Jim replied, giving his prisoner one last good shove before sliding the door closed. "Important to the magic doesn't necessarily mean important to the ship. Also, no, I do not think that, there's a hole where the far wall should be."

"Then how will we find them?"

Jim gestured at the supply closet, then at the general space around them, and finally further down the hallway. "We'll know."

"Does this have to do with the button?" Spock asked, something like frustration laced soft through his expression.

"Yes. I can't-see..." Jim gestured as clearly as he could. "There isn't, like, a _path_ or anything. As we take the right steps forward, the...aura, I guess, of the linchpin clarifies a little. We just have to keep walking."

"Fascinating." Spock led the way back down the hallway, more cautious than Jim had been, phaser set to stun and held ready.

...He made a striking picture, Jim thought as he finally drew his own phaser. Although, of course, now wasn't the time for admiration. Now was the time to focus and follow Spock. And also to answer the question he was asking.

"Does the aura fade if we misstep?"

Jim pulled his eyes forward. "What? Oh. Kind of?" He shrugged one shoulder. "Not really though."

"You are vexing," Spock observed.

"Well it's not any easier on my end," Jim muttered, taking a left when the hallway split. Spock followed him, even when he doubled back and went right instead. "This isn't a science, it's more of..."

"An art?" Spock asked.

Jim shook his head. "A culinary skill. The button doesn't want the linchpin to set all these people free. Magic like that is _powerful_ and nourishing and _delicious._ Basically I'm following my nose. If my nose were my eye." Jim signed at himself. "Or whatever."

"I can hear all of this," Uhura said in their ears. "It's really interesting, and I have a lot of questions, but you're also being really loud for an infiltration mission. I'd recommend something a lot closer to radio silence, if you can manage it."

"Spoilsport," Jim whispered. Spock touched his elbow, nodding once when Jim glanced back at him.

They continued on in silence. As they made their way in what seemed to be the direction of the _most Romulans ever,_ they were forced to knock a bunch more of them unconscious, usually in the form of sneak-phasering or stealth-neck pinches.

Inevitably, of course, that luck ran out.

A single Romulan found them. He wasn't close enough for a pinch, so Jim lifted his phaser. The Romulan was faster: He darted to one side of the hallway, slamming his fist against a ship-wide comm to yell in Romulan. Probably not about how his day was going.

Probably about them.

Jim stunned the Romulan mid-word, but by then it was too late. A flood of his crew members came around the corner, yelling and brandishing assorted weapons.

"Wasn't this a mining ship?" Jim demanded furiously as he and Spock ran, sending wild phaser blasts over their shoulders.

Well, Jim's shots were random. Spock's appeared to be hitting someone every time. Showoff. Not that it mattered: there were too many of them.

Jim and Spock ran, reckless in their goal of somehow escaping. Uhura could tell they were running, could track their life signs on the ship, was able to direct them down advantageous hallways. But she couldn't detect the mob that chased them; the Romulans didn't show up on her displays at all. Her frustration mounted, doubling every time they careened around a corner into a waiting mass of enemies.

Occasionally, Jim would say, "Close your eyes" and grab Spock's hand. Spock obeyed, his trust nearly staggering, and let Jim pull him through the ragged holes torn through the walls. If Spock could see, it might not work. It definitely didn't work for the Romulans, who didn't know what the ship really was, possibly because knowledge like that would collapse their whole reality. Or something. So Jim shut down Spock's sight and carried him through Other on faith alone, and the Romulans shouted in exasperation and mounting fear and couldn't follow, had to update their crewmates via comms and unbelievable descriptions. It worked.

Until it didn't.

They went sideways through the ship's broken interior into a large, open room. It seemed quiet. Empty. Dark, too.

A hand closed around Jim's throat. It lifted him into the air almost before Jim realized what was going on. His own hands flashed up to wrap around the wrist and his feet kicked more in surprise than anything else.

"They told me we had acquired... _rats._ Aboard my ship," a low, furious voice said somewhere behind Jim. "I couldn't believe it, of course. Who would _dare?"_ It wasn't a familiar voice, not enough to be someone Jim knew. But it did have a touch of... nostalgia. As though someone else had heard it before, then described it clearly enough for recognition.

 _Nero_ , Jim realized. _The troubled Romulan._

Spock plowed into their attacker with a snarl that threw all three of them to the ground.

Okay, actually, only Jim actually hit the ground. Spock and Nero caught themselves, launching at each other with nearly matching snarls. Jim scrambled for his phaser, trying to sight the enemy without catching Spock. He couldn't, not safely. They were fighting too furiously.

Jim wasn't worried about Spock injuring the enemy too badly, or even killing him. Nero wasn't the center of the aura. He was, however, deeply touched by it. Someone close to him, physically or metaphorically, had brought the _Narada_ here in the first place. That person was the linchpin.

They were so _close_ now.

The Beldam rose in Jim, ravenous for a taste of the power keeping all these Romulans and their ruined ship in a time, place, condition that didn't belong to them. Jim got to his knees, lifting his hands to touch the shadows seething around him. They shuddered at his attention, deepening around him to creep out toward Nero. Jim's heart tripped and raced, swelling with anticipation. He would consume this bitter captain like fine chocolate wine, savoring every drop of blood and spirit until he was a husk more profound than the ship deteriorating around him. Nero would be his forever, with him, a part of all the others that fueled him

that

would never leave

 _don't leave me don't leave me i'll_

 **die**.

"Jim!" Spock cried, "No!" He broke away from Nero, who looked surprised and furious, to lunge at Jim.

A smile split Jim's face. Something wet slid down his face.

The shadows surged.

Nero got a grip on Spock, pinning him to the ground.

The linchpin aura flared, coalescing into a running Romulan shouting for his captain.

Darkness struck at Nero, blocked at the last minute by the linchpin. "Ayel," Nero snarled. "What are you doing?"

The newcomer-the linchpin- _Ayel_ looked around, eyes tracking all the strands of Jim's power writhing around them. Nero glanced around but didn't seem to notice.

Could Nero not _see?_

"Take them," Nero snarled, nodding toward Jim. "Get them ready for interrogation. We'll learn why they're here and what they know."

Ayel hesitated, clearly unwilling to step through the shadows to Jim.

But Jim needed to get Ayel alone. Nero didn't matter; the ship didn't matter; this _fight_ didn't matter. Ayel did.

Jim shut his eyes, trying to look weak and helpless. With every ounce of control he possessed, thinking of Spock's calm and Bones' relentless effort, he drew the Beldam's power back into himself, releasing the shadows, trying not to make it seem like he was the one doing it. He let himself slump sideways.

"Jim," Spock called again, heat and fear in his voice.

Nero frowned. "Jim?" he echoed, pulling at Spock's shoulder until he could see his face. Nero's eyes widened before he threw his head back to laugh. "Starfleet was stupid enough to throw my first-choice targets right at my feet! You will watch," he snarled at Spock, shaking him hard, "as I burn your world, the way you burned mine. Watch and be _helpless._ You will see all that you love turned to _ash_. Take them away," he ordered to the guards who arrived.

"Do you need backup?" Uhura asked. "Cough once for yes, sigh for no."

Jim sighed deeply, trying to catch Spock's eyes as they were dragged away, trying to figure out some way to communicate that this was all fine, all according to plan. Well, if Jim had had a plan, this would be according to it. Spock looked worried and furious but went along without struggle, presumably to encourage the Romulans to keep them together.

They did, tossing Jim and Spock into a cell that hissed when it shut, pressurizing around them. "Is this room safe?" Spock asked.

Jim glanced around before nodding. Nearly that same moment, Spock yanked off his own helmet, then reached for Jim's. "Are you all right?" he demanded.

"Fine," Jim promised, holding still so Spock could wipe the blood off his face. "I got hold of it fast enough."

"Will there be fallout from this?"

"Eventually," Jim admitted, too keyed up to lie. His gaze darted around the confined space, seeking evidence of Ayel's presence, residue from the aura, any hint that his prey was still nearby.

...Target. His target was nearby. The linchpin. Not prey.

not _yet_

Spock gripped Jim's shoulder, giving it a brief shake. The contact was enough to pull Jim out of his spiraling thoughts. He reached up to wrap his hand around Spock's wrist, grounding himself in Spock enough to let out a shaky breath. "It's more than I thought it would be," he admitted. "Resisting him. The magic. It would be _delicious,_ Spock, do you understand how _perfect_ he would taste, I just want-"

"You do _not,"_ Spock snapped. His free hand darted out to catch the back of Jim's neck. He shifted as though he would touch his forehead to Jim's, or press their cheeks together, or nose at the curve of Jim's ear. Somehow, for some reason, he resisted connecting their skin. " _You_ do not," he repeated more calmly. "The Beldam will warp your desires as long as she maintains her foothold. That is next on our list, Jim. First this linchpin, then that creature. Try, if you can, to remember her desires are not yours. Try to other them. They are not of your making."

"They're already Other," Jim joked weakly, wishing Spock would touch him, offer him an anchor. "That's the problem."

Spock squeezed his neck, firm and comforting. "What is our plan, Jim?"

Jim opened his mouth, froze, eyes snapping back to the door. "Do you know what you are?" he asked.

"Jim," Spock murmured.

He stepped away from the Vulcan, getting between him and the Other energy swelling through the cracks in their cell. Jim could set a trap good as any Beldam, a web of words and taunts to draw his prey-

his goal-

the _linchpin_ into striking distance. "Do you know what you've _done?"_ he accused.

"I've made it so my captain can have his revenge," a low, snarling voice replied. "I've done what I _had_ to so he can fulfill his purpose!"

"You've corrupted yourself," Jim spat. "You've corrupted your _crew._ You've damned them and yourself for no reason!"

"No reason!" Something heavy slammed against the door. "You call avenging an entire murdered _planet_ no reason!"

"Stars collapse," Jim said, slinking closer to the door, touching it with the tips of the fingers on one hand. "Stars _explode._ That's how stars _work._ That isn't anybody's fault!"

 _come into my parlor_

Ayel banged on the door again. "Spock could have saved us! Stopped the star! He did _nothing._ "

"So Vulcan has to suffer your same fate? _Worse,_ because it'll be deliberate and not an act of nature!"

"Nature," Ayel snarled. "What do you know of _nature?"_

Jim laughed, a sound like tar bubbling in a pit. "Come through," he taunted, "if you have the courage of your conviction. I'll show you."

Spock grabbed Jim to pull him away from the door as Ayel yanked it open. "What are you doing?" someone shouted, "Nero said to leave them for interrogation!"

"I do not answer to you," Ayel spat. Footfalls ran toward their cell-guards? At least two. They crowded with Ayel in the doorway.

Jim reached up to thread his hand into Spock's hair, drawing him close enough to touch, to share, to finally _show him_ what their enemy looked like. What they were.

What Ayel had turned them into.

Spock gasped. Jim knew what he was seeing: The Romulans were dead. Not just dead but rotten, skin sour green and flaking. Muscle and tendons peeked through the holes torn into their flesh, flashes of white bone visible when they moved. One of the guards had lost half his face, molars grinding visibly as he struggled with Ayel.

Who was a shriveled husk of a creature, skin wrapped tight over his bones as though all the blood and vitality had evaporated through his empty eye sockets. The Romulans crunched when they moved, joints frozen and cracking, nightmare monsters unaware of their own condition.

"Do you know," Jim asked again, "what you are?"

 _Dead_ , Spock realized, the thought echoing in Jim's mind like a whisper, raising shivers of recognition in both their minds. _How long have they been dead, Jim?_

 _The linchpin did this. It was the price he paid to make his wish._

"You wished for this?" Spock asked, horror laced under the unintended question.

For a moment, the Romulans stopped fighting. They looked at Spock with confusion and contempt. "We aren't saving you your sake," one spat-not the one missing his face. The other: missing all skin between ribs and hips, missing all organs usually protected in that cavern, utterly unaware of all Ayel had taken from him. "Nero has plans for you, Ambassador _Spock._ Even Ayel can't get in the way of that."

"Nero's plans are futile," Spock said in a bleak tone unsuited to him. "Nothing can repair the damage done here. I am-sorry. For this end you face."

The guards looked even more confused and angry for it. Ayel shoved them back. "I have business with the prisoners."

"No," Jim said, passing comfort and resolve to Spock before pulling away. "But I have business with _you._ "

He reached out with the Beldam to peel away the magic holding their Romulan guards together, consuming strings of it like cheese or candy. They staggered and collapsed, just to the ground in his right eye, folding as though he'd knocked them out. To his left eye, their end was more permanent. Their corpses, devoid of what preserved them, folded. Tendons and muscle rotted away, decades of decay finally catching up. Bones clattered to the ground in a haphazard scatter. Part of him yearned to step forward, collect the bones, crunch through to any remaining marrow, such a sweet dessert.

The magic itself was delicious, even more than he'd imagined, filling on a level that was never satisfied. There was certainly enough around him now, a feast of sticky darkness. He could keep eating, even after these two, the ship was so-

Spock jostled Jim's shoulder. Jim blinked out of his meal.

Ayel was shouting. "-what you're doing or I will kill you now and Nero's plans be _damned-"_

 _"_ Too late," Jim hissed, then coughed to clear the Beldam from his voice. "Too late to worry about being damned. It's already happened. Come inside." He jerked his head toward the cell's interior. "We need to talk."

"Not for anything," Ayel spat.

"Then I'll eat you too." Jim smiled when Ayel hesitated, glancing down at the bones that had been his shipmates. Well-Ayel saw their bodies.

Ayel must have wished his way out of seeing them for what they were. This many wishes... it couldn't be a djinn. It had to be much, much worse.

Figured.

"I will have it," Jim murmured, hands loose at his side. "Do not make me take it from you."

"What are you?" Ayel managed. He took a step into the room.

"Something you should already have known about," Jim said, " _before_ you made the wishes. Now it's too late, Ayel. Something like me would have come for you if you hadn't left your universe, maybe even something kind. But you did leave." Jim let the shadows deepen around him, let them grow long spidery fingers tipped with nails like thorns. "You came here, to Vulcan, with wishes so dark they sang through all of space and time. So here I am, Ayel. Called to be here. _Inevitable._ More's the pity for you: it doesn't get worse than what I am."

Ayel pulled his weapon to level it on Jim's chest. "I don't need you to live," he growled, trying to hide the way his fear made the phaser shake.

Jim shut his eyes to breathe in, calm and sure, like a diner smelling a fine meal. "You are assuming," he said, voice low in the register the Beldam triggered, "that I am a common alive thing. A thing that can be killed by weapons made for something _other_ than specifically what I am. Oh, Ayel-

"Why did you make the wishes?"

Ayel pulled the trigger.

The moment before he did, Spock lashed out with a blow that broke Ayel's arm, snapping the Romulan's elbow with a casual violence that make Jim blink. Ayel's shot went high, forced in that direction by the new angle of his arm. It seemed to take Ayel a moment to process the pain, after which he more groaned than screamed, air shocked out of his lungs. While Ayel crumpled forward, Spock reached out to pluck the phaser out of his hand. Not gently. Ayel sobbed, finally collapsing to the ground.

"Didn't-" Jim cleared his throat. "Didn't know you had that in you."

"To what do you refer?" Spock asked, investigating the phaser before he switched the settings and tucked it into his belt. "Are you surprised I would take the initiative, or that I would move to protect you?"

"No, I." Jim shook his head. "I figured those out years ago. It's more the, uh, sudden and unmitigated violence. You've, uh. Been hiding that somewhere?"

"We have not, in the past, had need of violence," Spock told him with a mild expression utterly at odds with the way Ayel was trying to fight through his pain without any success. "My species prides itself on control, Jim. What need would we have for such a practice, built into our very culture, had we lacked the inclination toward violence?"

Jim swallowed hard. "Uh."

Something like concern shadowed Spock's expression. "You have no need to fear me, Jim. I would never behave thus toward you, no matter the circumstance."

"Not really, um. Fear." Jim felt his face heat when Spock's concern turned speculative with a frankly unsettling level of interest. Jim coughed, shaking his head firmly. "Now's not the time."

"No," Spock agreed, unusual heat in the word. "Later."

Jim's initial reaction to that was... unhelpful, so he pushed it aside. "Where is it?" he asked Ayel, more to see if he would instinctively angle to protect it than anything else. The Romulan, curled around his arm and struggling to regain control of his breathing, glared but otherwise didn't react. Jim crouched in front of him, letting a fraction of the darkness in him gleam in the button. "You do not," he said softly, "want to do this the hard way."

"You will have to kill me," Ayel snarled, like Jim hadn't turned two other Romulans nearly to dust just minutes ago.

"Not difficult," Jim said. "And it's going to happen. Well, I mean, I guess _technically._ " He wobbled one hand in the air in a see-saw motion. "If we're being literal, you've all been dead for a long time. Since a thing can't be killed twice, I'm not _actually_ responsible for this... mess. I'm more offering a _release_ than, like, _murder._ Don't you think?" he asked up to Spock.

The Vulcan inclined his head. "Logical reasoning," he said: higher praise than Jim had expected.

He tried not to preen visibly when he turned a smile on Ayel. "See? You're already killed, Ayel. There's nothing to gain in resisting the end. I'm here to deliver it either way. It will be easier, for you, if you cooperate."

Ayel spit at him. It landed in a defiant glop on the knee of Jim's suit.

Spock stepped forward with a snarl, pulling one leg back as though to deliver a shattering kick. For a moment, Jim considered letting it happen, down in the part of him that curled into a snarl at such disrespect. But the bigger part of him, trained by legends, raised by monsters, knew how little Ayel's defiance mattered. Jim reached back to touch Spock, just a hand on the Vulcan's nearest leg. Spock broke off immediately, pacing across the cell and back.

By the time he was at Jim's side again, composed, hands settled on his weapons instead of his customary stance, Jim had decided what to do about Ayel. He looked at the magic holding him together, the strength of it, how it ebbed and flowed, really _looked._ Once he understood, he let his darkness stretch out.

"Remember," he said, "that I didn't want to do this the hard way."

"Do your worst," Ayel growled.

"That will not, I think, be necessary," Spock said. "In this instance, with the current power imbalance, even a mediocre effort would be enough."

"True," Jim said. "But he did _ask_." He smiled, and flickered his power at the edge of Ayel's body, and ate the magic he found there.

But only at his edges. Starting at the furthest extremities of Ayel's body, he unwound the magic keeping Ayel from understanding what he was. He let the Romulan see the rotting of his boots, the holes in his gloves, the rending of his skin. Ayel became aware of the ruin he'd condemned himself to. It didn't hurt: It couldn't. Ayel had no nerve endings to scream a warning of killing damage. No part of him was alive, certainly not his brain. He was an Other construction, a mixture of death and magic circling the drain at the end of a selfish, unwise wish.

Ayel's gaze snapped up from the bone showing through his right glove and skin and muscle. Deep in his eyes, at last, a growing sense of understanding rose, gurgling up under his pride and ignorance. It seemed almost beyond description, outside the Romulan's ability to articulate.

"Do you know," Jim asked, "know what you are? What you traded to give Nero his Pyrrhic victory? Even if you destroy Vulcan, even if you kill Spock, every Spock in every world, look at what you are, Ayel. Was it worth this?"

The ruined right hand of Nero's enabler reached out, shaking, bones clattering against each other. Ayel gripped Jim's knee where his spit had landed. He opened his mouth and said nothing.

Jim rested his hand on Ayel's. "We don't have to do it the hard way," he murmured, meeting the unvoiced horror in Ayel's eyes with calm certainty. "Where is it?"

"My crew," Ayel gasped. "My... _friends-"_

"Where is it?"

"I didn't mean it. I didn't mean _this-"_

"Where?" Jim demanded, squeezing Ayel's hand so the Romulan could watch his joints grind together.

"My quarters," he said. Something not quite like fascination filled his eyes. He seemed unable to look away from his hand under Jim's. "Down this hall. A right. I am sorry." He dragged his eyes up to Jim's. "Will you end this?"

Jim inclined his head. "I will."

"Can you-" Ayel swallowed hard. "It said it could grant any five wishes. Can you make this...unhappen? Use the remaining wish. Kill me before I find it."

"No." Jim cupped both his hands around Ayel's face, putting aside the Beldam's power to reach for Sadie Doyle's, the sort she had taught him over countless nights while he kept her drink refreshed. Light rose in Sadie when she did this, tapping into the Beyond to guide wayward spirits. There was no light in Jim, no matter what he did, so he had none to offer Ayel. Instead, he pulled aside a curtain, letting the Romulan see whatever heaven he could most want. "But I can offer you a happy ever after, if you want it."

"My crew?" he said weakly.

"I'm not strong enough to let them each choose a best place," Jim admitted, "but I can certainly open a single gate long enough for all of them to get through. So pick wisely: I'm sending the rest of your crew after you."

Ayel wept, and laid his head down, and was gone. Jim squinted as he sort of...pinned back the curtain to Ayel's heaven, shooing the two lingering guards through. "We have about fifteen minutes," he told Spock. "I won't be able to hold it open much longer than that."

"It should be sufficient." Spock crossed to the door, glancing out to check for approaching enemies before looking back. "This is generous of you, Jim. They have caused you enough pain to excuse callous treatment of their afterlife, or certainly a lack of care for it. Yet you will show them to comfort in the end. One might say they do not deserve it."

Jim stepped over the Romulan bones to join Spock at the door. "Did you hear what he said, though? Five wishes." He snorted, shaking his head. "Poor Ayel. He never stood a chance. Anything he did after finding it almost isn't even his fault." Jim pointed down the hallway. "The description didn't make much sense, but I picked up the trace of it before Ayel passed. The pin's this way."

"What do you mean?" Spock asked. He put on his own helmet, then gestured for Jim to do the same. "I thought Ayel was the linchpin, and he is dead now."

"He was always dead," Jim pointed out while tugging his helmet into place. "Come on."

Spock drew his Starfleet phaser and followed him "What do five wishes have to do with it?"

"I'll show you."

They found Ayel's room without incident. Or, well. Not any incident worth _mentioning._

Now that Jim knew what they were looking for, and where it was, and already had the heaven opened anyway, he stopped pretending the Romulans chasing them were alive. Spock stunned the first one who came around the corner, but Jim held up a hand before he could shoot the other. His magic ate through theirs, slurping it up like spaghetti. Spock seemed a touch unsettled when the momentum of the charging Romulans meant their bones scattered forward across the hall, but there wasn't much to be done about that. He'd adapt. Jim spared a thought to shuffle the Romulan spirits through to their fellows; it didn't take much. In their hearts, none of them wanted to be here.

So Jim set them free, trying not to release the ship itself while Sulu and Pavel might still be aboard. He let his shadow stretch around corners and through doors, touching the Romulans before they even knew Jim was coming. Spock adjusted his focus from detecting enemies and protecting Jim to making sure he didn't trip on any bones or discarded clothing.

In that manner, after only a few minutes, they found Ayel's room. To Jim's right eye, all seemed normal, smooth metal wall around a sealed door. To the button, the whole corridor was corroded, rotted out from this epicenter. Spock examined the keypad, probably in an effort to break in. Jim took his hand before could get started.

"Close your eyes," he murmured. Spock obeyed immediately, allowing Jim to lead him through the broken door ("Big step up and forward, then stay close.") and into Ayel's area. Before he released Spock, Jim glanced around to make sure nothing in the room could hurt him if unseen.

It was ruined, but that was pretty expected. All that magic warping time and space and who knew what else-life and death, to start with-didn't do subtle work. The bed and cabinets, the walls and floor, the ceiling and desk, all of them were crushed inward, pulled toward a focal point near the far corner. Ayel couldn't have slept here; even when he couldn't see the damage, he would have felt it, the darkness seeping across the floor and up the walls like a sticky fog. Even Spock shuddered, and there was nothing in him of Other that Jim didn't lend him.

"Okay," Jim said, finally letting Spock's hand go. Spock tightened his grip in a brief squeeze before opening his eyes and drawing away. Jim felt a smile tug his mouth, then even that was dampened by the presence in the room.

Ayel had a box. More of a chest, locked and tucked partially under the twisted metal frame that had once been his bed. Everything in Jim told him how dangerous the box was-not that it mattered.

He needed it.

Jim knelt by the box, the only intact object in the room, and drew it out of the debris surrounding it. The lock held when he gave it a sharp tug.

Spock crouched at his side. "Is this the object?"

"It contains the object," Jim agreed, pulling at the lid again.

"Here." Spock took the box from him, steadying his hands in a good grip before slowly, inexorably, prying the lid open. He looked inside, one eyebrow ticked up in surprise. "But this is just," he began, upending the box as though to dump it out in his hand.

"No!" Jim snatched it away. "Don't touch it, jeez, don't you know anything?"

"Not about this," Spock said after a short, surprised silence. He sat back on his heels, studying Jim. "Will you not tell me?"

Jim drew a deep breath, trying to shore himself up before reaching into the box. The thing inside reached for him in return, not physically, but in his mind and spirit, hooks of promise and suggestion whispering how easy it would be to reshape the world. If the world was not enough, then it would reshape _reality,_ time and space and anything that-

"Enough," Jim snapped, wrapping his hand around it as though a firm grip could quell its temptation.

"What is it?" Spock asked. He leaned forward to peer at the item in Jim's hand.

Jim held it out so Spock could see. It didn't look like much. Most people would mistake it for a bundle of sticks in aged, yellow wrappings. Four of the sticks were broken. One remained intact.

"This is the linchpin?"

"It is." Jim drew it back when Spock tried to touch it. _Ever the scientist_ , Jim thought, fond and worried. "It's a monkey's paw."

Spock's skepticism was so thorough it almost seemed like a physical aura. "Monkey's paw is, I assume, its colloquial name."

"No." Jim looked at it, knowing his hard expression would concern Spock but unable to pretend, not this close to the paw. "It is exactly what its name says. Monkey's paws are a particularly nasty bit of magic that will grant wishes. Some say only three; in my experience, users get one wish per unbroken finger." He nodded toward the bundle. "Looks like Ayel made four."

"What were they?"

"There's no way to know," Jim said.

One of Spock's hands moved toward the paw. "There is a remaining finger. Surely we could use the wish to-"

Jim turned so his shoulder blocked Spock's hand, tilting his head to catch Spock's eye. "Do you feel that?" he asked. "Look inside. Can you feel it encouraging you to make a wish?"

For a moment, Jim thought Spock would protest. Instead, he shut his eyes, turning his attention inward. "How is it doing that?" he asked after a quiet moment.

"That's how it works." Jim shrugged. "Just how monkey's paws operate."

Spock opened his eyes. "I am better able to guard against it, now that I know its touch in my mind. What manner of creature creates these?"

"No one knows." Jim curled his hand around the paw. "It's possible nothing does. Sometimes things like this, powerful things, just...are. There's a hypothesis that there's actually only one monkey's paw in the universe, and it moves around to those most susceptible to its influence."

"Which is how Ayel, a Romulan deep space miner," Spock mused, "came to be in possession of a Terran artifact."

"It must have seen this," Jim said. "Somehow, it knew. The bigger the wish, the bigger the payoff, I assume. And this? Breaking through to another _reality?_ With hundreds of others who need to think it's their doing and nothing about universe hopping is weird? That's huge."

"Why was Ayel dead, then," Spock asked, "if the monkey's paw was able to grant his wishes?"

"Because there's a catch." Jim began looking around for the least-tainted scrap of cloth in the room to wrap the paw. "It'll grant any wish your heart desires, but you pay big time for the way it interferes with fate. Maybe you want to win the lottery and wish for it. You'll win, but maybe because you picked up the ticket someone else dropped when they were hit by a falling piano. Maybe right after you pick up your winnings, you're caught in an explosion. Maybe you get the money, but your family dies." Jim yanked an old shirt out of Ayel's closet, shaking it out before tying it around their linchpin.

"Ayel wished for Nero to be able to achieve his revenge, and this is the result?" Spock looked around, no doubt trying to envision what the room really looked like. "This destruction and decay? This...ruin?"

"Hop through to a Federation weak enough to allow a founding planet to be destroyed. A Vulcan able to be taken off guard." Jim shrugged. "And for only the low, low cost of the life and vitality of every living being aboard this ship. We'll never know which bit of what got traded off, one wish at a time, to end with this. But I'm sure we both get the gist."

"How do we undo this?" Spock asked. "We cannot wish for it. I do not see how allowing the Beldam to feed on this amount of destructive magic would be..." He struggled for an appropriate word. "Wise."

Jim nodded, thrusting the wrapped paw into his belt. "I honestly don't think she _could._ Oh, she'd sure try-the paw's power isn't a bucket that can be drained. It's a well, bubbling up from groundwater we can't even come close to drinking dry. I don't know if it would kill her, or glut her, or-" He shook his head. "I don't _know._ Just that it would be bad."

"Then how?" Spock demanded.

Jim gestured between them. "We can't wish, you're right. The Romulans can't either. But there's someone else, isn't there? Someone who can only benefit, no matter what the paw does."

Spock frowned. "...McCoy?"

"What? No!" Jim barked a laugh. "Bones is a hedge witch, pretty much no one hates magic like this more than hedge witches. He's probably trying to figure out a way to set this thing on fire from a distance. No, no one who came with us can do it. No one touched by the paw's magic. But there's someone else, isn't there? Someone we found who shares a connection to the paw's home universe."

"Oh," Spock breathed.

"Other Spock." Jim nodded. "Our final hope."

…

Jim led them back to their ship. Occasionally they stumbled across a Romulan or two, which Jim continued ignoring, except for the glance it took to...send them on? Set them free? Usher them through the curtain to the afterlife.

Or whatever he was doing.

It looked, to Spock, as though the Romulans simply fell, marionettes with cut strings. He knew it would not seem so to Jim. Jim, whose momentary sharing of his vision through the meld had revealed a ruined, rotting truth. Even now, Spock wondered if he ran over bones unknowingly when he passed the deceased (decayed) Romulan miners left in Jim's wake.

The monkey's paw continued trying to tempt Spock ( _wish to see what Jim sees, how could it go wrong?)_. It was an interesting phenomenon, now that Spock knew to shield against it. He wondered, in passing, what twist it would put on his wishes. What wish would he make, if he could? Besides being like Jim, a part of Jim's world, what could it give him?

Of course, entertaining those thoughts, even briefly, was likely a manifestation of the item's pull. Spock wanted to get the paw into a facility to test it-another trick? Or just scientific interest? He would never know; the risk of being wrong, of succumbing to the artifact, was not worth the potential findings.

Chekov opened the airlock connecting their ship to the _Narada_. He let them by with a charming smile, checking both ways down the hall before locking up behind them. As soon as the door slid closed, the room began pressurizing, and Sulu (presumably) decoupled them from the _Narada._

"That was very entertaining mission," Chekov said, taking Jim's helmet from him once Jim pulled it off. "I was able to fight many Romulans! They were not so great an opponent as I thought they would be." His expression fell into what Spock recognized as a pout. "Also you found our objective before we could! That is cheating, I think."

"We didn't take your objective with us," Jim pointed out, leading the way back into the larger storage area. He reached behind him to pat his back in search of the suit's main zipper. "Which I think means it's fine. If you'd found the linchpin first, would I cry about it? No."

"We will never know," Chekov sighed. He stepped toward Jim, lifting one hand toward him.

Spock reached out first, drawing Jim's zipper down in a firm, smooth tug. Jim looked back at him, surprise and something darker in his eyes. Before he could comment, Spock turned so Jim could return the favor.

"Would you like a moment alone?" Chekov asked, sounding amused.

"No he would _not."_ Dr. McCoy stormed up to them, face dark with annoyance. "I want to know why you sent that guy here _right now._ We don't need this kind of shit, Jim! Also would you _close_ the heaven, _seriously,_ this is obscene."

Jim pointed at him. "Can't," he said. "Made a promise. But bring me the guy and those two things will sort each other out."

"Guy?" Chekov echoed. Then he blinked, face lighting up with understanding. "You mean the other Spock!"

"Two!" McCoy snarled. "You sent a _second_ Spock aboard even though you could have-"

Jim held up a hand. "Not yet." He gestured toward the lockers on the other side of the bay. "We're gonna get out of all this extra equipment. Somebody's gonna send other Spock down here. And he's gonna help us get rid of this monkey's paw."

McCoy went bone white. Even his lips seemed bloodless. "Monkey's paw," he whispered. His eyes darted over Jim, perhaps seeking proof. Then he shut them tight. "I'm gonna go," he said.

"Probably for the best," Jim agreed, radiating concern and sympathy, although he did not step toward his friend to offer comfort. "Do you want to go with him?" he asked Chekov. "Monkey paw magic generally doesn't pull as hard on vampires, since you're geared to want blood more than anything. Still, it's better not to have you around if you're feeling like you need any particular thing."

The vampire considered it, thoughtful and serious. "No," he said at last. "I am not hungry, and my sire is safe. He is content with me. I have all I need."

"More than content," Jim said fondly.

"Well I'm not," McCoy snapped, turning on his heel. "This whole room smells like _shit_ now. Uhura is sending down Old Spock. Wrap this up," he demanded of Jim.

"There is no need for-," Spock began.

Jim cut him off by laying a newly bared hand on the skin of Spock's shoulder. _He's not angry,_ Jim thought. _He's afraid. Let him go._

Spock did.

Not long after stripping and storing their suits, his elder counterpart arrived, hands folded calmly at his back. His expression likely seemed bland to the Terrans. Spock himself read a great depth of affection and curiosity, all of it directed at Jim.

Logically, feeling jealous was unproductive. Feeling it toward himself, especially when Jim's interest in the older Spock was entirely mission-based, made even less sense.

The monkey's paw's whispering grew louder.

Spock shifted toward Jim, then away. Being close to Jim might assuage his unneeded emotional reaction, but it also brought him within touching distance of the monkey's paw. His earlier absent curiosity about what he would wish for solidified into a bone-deep knowledge.

He would wish for Jim. To have all of Jim. To live in a world where no one mattered to Jim except Spock, where no one could separate them, where they could live however they chose without any-

Jim touched his arm, brow creased with concern. Spock took a deep breath, mirroring his counterpart's posture. "I believe it has successfully attached a hook," he told his Jim.

Not his Jim. Jim did not belong to anyone except himself, and maybe Kit. Of course, he _could_. Very easily, he could belong to Spock, every inch of skin and trace of thought, his whole-

Spock stepped back, hands clenched together behind his back. "Perhaps I should join the doctor."

"No." Jim shook his head stubbornly. "I want you to see this."

"I, also, would prefer to see our mission through to its ending," Spock admitted. He shut his eyes against a firm pull in his mind that set his heart thundering. "However, I am not sure it is in your best interest that I remain."

Jim held out his hand. "Let me show you something," he said. "I think it'll provide a sufficient distraction."

Spock's hand was in Jim's, fingers running together, almost before the offer could be completed. It didn't matter what Jim had to show him, only that they were together, they could be _together,_ it was destiny, they were-

A flicker at the corner of Spock's vision startled him out of his thoughts. It was gold and white, shot through with red like Terran blood or the oldest, deepest deserts of Vulcan. Spock looked at it, turning to the source in thoughtless curiosity that crowded out even the wishes.

The light was coming from his counterpart. It twisted and flowed around him, an aura that bubbled and collapsed in on itself, whispering regrets and fury just below Spock's threshold of hearing. Mouths formed in the aura, bitter, wailing mouths, tearing each other open and apart, writhing into the air and across the floor.

Oh. Not other Spock- _Other_ Spock. He was not dead as the Romulans were, not a revenant, but he was not alive either.

A ghost.

"How long," Spock began.

Jim squeezed his hand. _For as long as he's been here-maybe longer. I'd bet no one survived the trip from that reality to this one. Takes too much power. The paw probably had to trade their lives to do it, and from there it was a steady rot._

Spock looked away from the ghost, back and slightly down to meet Jim's eyes. _Why would Ayel do that?_

 _He almost certainly didn't know._

The light of Other Spock's haunting flickered at the edge of Spock's vision, a taunt and reminder of all that had been suffered to fulfill Nero's desire for revenge. _We will have to do something about Romulus, to prevent this occurring in our universe._

Something sad curled through Jim's hand to Spock. _If Ayel found the paw before Romulus,_ he thought, nearly a whisper hidden between them, _and if what he wanted most of all was Nero-_

The tragedy of that overwhelmed Spock for a moment. _Then,_ he murmured in return, shaken by all the lives ruined for such a small, selfish wish-

One he might make himself.

 _Then we must be rid of the monkey's paw._

 _Later,_ Jim thought. _Stay with me, for now. We'll see this to its end._ "I have something for you," he said to the Other Spock. "It might not be...pleasant. But it'll make this stop."

"This?" Other Spock echoed, studying the place where their skin touched so intently he might not even realize he spoke.

Jim gestured back toward the door they'd come through. "The _Narada._ Nero. All of it."

Other Spock blinked, then focused on Jim's face, interested at last. "You have the red matter?"

"No." Jim cocked a half smile. "Like I said, it's not my goal, and not as important as you think. None of this is what it seems, old friend. And I need you to trust me, if we want it to end without anyone else having to die."

"Of course I trust you," Other Spock said, head tilted curiously. "What must I do?"

Jim stepped forward without removing his hand from Spock's. "I need you to make a wish."

Spock yanked on Jim, alarm spiking through him. "Jim, no. That is how this all-"

"You too," Jim said, looking back at him, eyes fathomless with an emotion Spock could not read, even linked to him so closely. "You have to trust me too, or it won't work."

For a moment, Spock struggled, warring against the knowledge of what damage a wish twisted against its purpose could do. Spock trusted Jim with everything he was. But the monkey's paw he trusted not at all. How could the two be separated?

Jim curled his fingers in, stroking them again Spock's. His smile was warm and understanding. "Believe in me," he said.

Spock did.

Since they were in each other's thoughts, Jim didn't require a verbal acknowledgement. "It needs to be a specific wish," he said, turning back to the Other Spock. "One only you can make. And you have to wish it with everything you are, every last fiber. Do you understand?"

"No," Other Spock said. "What profit is there in wishing? It is..."

"Illogical?" Jim said, his amusement filtering into Spock, underscored by a deep patience. "That's where the trust comes in."

"I will trust you, and make a wish, and Nero will be defeated?" Other Spock's skepticism tinged his haunting, curling its edges in ragged strips. "Even for you, Jim, that seems...unlikely."

"What are the odds I would find you on the _Narada?"_ Jim asked. "Or that I would do it with the bridge crew you remember from _Enterprise-_ the _whole_ bridge crew? We should be scattered throughout the 'fleet by now, earning our stripes, building the reputations necessary to be assigned to the flagship. Yet, here we are. Also Pavel is a _vampire."_

Other Spock glanced over at Chekov, who opened his mouth to bare his fangs with a theatrical little hiss. "Vampires began in Russia," he said. "My being one these last years is, really, continuation of a great tradition. You do not need to worry, I have not had Vulcan blood. Copper, I think, would not taste good, and would also not satisfy."

"I admit," Old Spock said, head tilted as he inspected Chekov's teeth (while the vampire himself made faint "aahhh" noises), "I had not expected vampires."

"But you did expect Jim?" Chekov asked around Other Spock's inquisitive fingers.

"Somehow," he replied, drawing back, "some way, at some point, Jim always finds me."

"An awful lot of faith," Chekov pointed out, "for one unwilling to wish."

"Wishing is the pastime of children," Other Spock protested. "I am Vulcan. We are better served if I do what I can with the resources and time left to me. I will help you retrieve the red matter-"

"This is not your world, Spock of Vulcan." Jim stepped forward, shadow stretching out around him. "It isn't even a version of it, as far as I can tell. This is a _different universe._ You can cling to your beliefs about what can and cannot happen or you can listen to me and solve this terrible mess before it gets any worse."

Still the Other Spock hesitated.

Jim rolled his eyes. "Okay, fine, _don't_ actually wish. Just-tell me. What _would_ you wish, if you had to pick something?"

"For the red matter to be in safe hands," Other Spock said mildly.

"Use your imagination!" Jim said, gesturing with both hands even though the right swung Spock's with it. Spock did not release him, even when Other Spock's attention once more locked on where they were linked. The older Vulcan, dead and lingering and ignorant of it, seemed lost, for a moment, in swirl of longing and regret. His ghostly aura turned from rage into sorrow, weeping for-

"Would you wish for the red matter?" Spock murmured, sending tendrils of his feelings for Jim through their connection, thrilling at the fond, warm response echoing back. "If you could take whatever you most wanted, pull it close and keep it, and had only one opportunity to do so, is the red matter really what you would choose? Is your self-delusion that profound?"

Other Spock's expression darkened. "You would choose otherwise?" he asked. "You would place your own desires over the well-being, the _survival,_ of countless other beings?"

Spock raised an eyebrow at him. "Who suggested there must be a trade? This is not an either/or proposition. Jim has asked a simple question, which you refuse to answer honestly. With one wish, what would I ask for? The well-being of strangers? No, I will not lie to myself so easily as that, though I spent much of my childhood perfecting the habit. Since that time, I met Jim and put aside self-delusion. I know myself. Therefore, to some degree, I must know you. I do not believe you would wish for red matter." He lifted Jim's hand in his. "This or red matter? No Spock in any universe would find such a choice difficult."

"But Vulcan," Other Spock said, weakening, his haunting light turning pale with yearning. "I know Nero's plan. Now that he has the red matter, he will-"

Chekov made an annoyed scoffing sound. "All this talk of what others will do." He shook his head. "That is not the question, da? It is simpler than you make it. I do not know why you fight this so hard." Between blinks, he crossed the space between himself and the Other Spock to poke him hard in the shoulder. "Be truthful! And _candid._ What would you wish for, if you could wish for only one thing?"

"Jim," Other Spock said. At first, Spock assumed he meant to begin another protest, but his counterpart added nothing afterward. At last: an honest answer, seeping into his ghostly aura in sad, pale yellows. The old Vulcan shut his eyes in something like shame, though he did not retract or qualify his statement.

"Good," Jim murmured, voice low and tempting. "Focus on that wish. Don't try to define it, to place it in a when or where. It's okay to want Jim; it's perfect. Wish to be with him with all your might. Can you do that?"

"With every breath," Other Spock confessed, shoulders slumping as though he'd been defeated. "Every beat of my heart calls for him."

"Don't bring him here," Jim said, free hand curving slowly behind his back. "This place is a mess, he'd hate it. Plus one Jim is enough for any universe. So, want him, to be with him, never parting. Are you wishing?"

"Always."

With a sharp tug, Jim produced the wrapped monkey's paw, holding it out to the Other Spock. "Touch this, and make your wish. Just this once, it's okay to be selfish, old friend." He smiled, otherworldly in his strength, channeling that power he sometimes did, untouched by the Beldam's darkness, deep and rich like songs in the desert. "Make your wish."

"To be with him," Other Spock said, eyes opened as he touched the paw. "My t'hy'la-to be where he is, touching and touched. Happy. Together. I wish that."

The last finger broke. Its snap echoed through the ship, in their ears and under their skin, trembling along their spines.

Power pressed on them like gravity, bending Spock and Jim and even Chekov while seeming to leave the Other Spock untouched. A tear ripped through reality, opening to color, light, indescribable noise. The Other Spock blinked, translucent hand clutched tight around the monkey's paw. "Oh," he said, sounding surprised, but pleasantly so. He smiled, huge and uninhibited, joy spilling over without thought.

In the next moment, he was gone. The light, the tear, the monkey's paw, all of it.

Gone.

Jim hastened over to a view port near the door, towing Spock with him so he could look out at the _Narada_. Chekov crowded at Jim's other side. Of course, sound did not travel through empty space, and the ship made no noise. It looked like it should, though, twisting and collapsing in on itself, a visual groan as it fell apart.

"I like this crew." They all jerked around to find Montgomery Scott, their engineer, peering out the window over their shoulders. He grinned at them. "You're all so exciting! That whole ship just-" He fluttered his fingers. "- _gone._ Was that one of you? _"_

"How did you get behind us?" Jim asked, more intrigued than frightened. "Pavel should have noticed, at the very least! And how did you know where we were?"

Scott gestured around the ship, at the floor and window and ceiling. "She's a sweet little ship, isn't she? Eager to help."

They stared at him. "The ship," Jim said, slowly, as though tasting the words, "helped you find us and then sneak up unnoticed."

"Well." Scott shrugged. "Sure. I don't need you to believe me. Not a soul ever has."

Jim peered at him. Spock felt a curl of his power reach out, brushing against Scott, who resonated like metal and a type of awareness utterly unfamiliar to Jim. "I didn't say I don't believe you," he replied, intentionally mild. "I'm just...a little curious. What exactly _are_ you?"

"Scottish," the engineer replied.

Jim barked a laugh.

"So what happened to the ship?" Scott asked.

"Good question." Jim turned to arch an eyebrow at Chekov. "What do you think?"

Chekov turned back to the window. He squinted as though that would help him see more. "It was a ghost ship the whole time…?" he said, more question than sure answer.

Jim nodded. "Got it in one. So don't feel bad if you had to hurt or kill any of the Romulans; they've been dead for a while. Corpses, each and every one."

"We thought there must be something wrong with them." Spock looked over at him curiously. Chekov shrugged. "Well, they smelled very badly, of rot and decay. It seemed unusual." He tilted his head to catch Jim's eye. "The old Spock did not smell. Other Spock. Was he not a zombie too?"

"A ghost," Jim said, looking around slightly.

"Ghost?" Scott asked, a combination of disbelieving and excited.

Spock felt Jim investigate the curtain he'd pinned back to leave Ayel's heaven open. He seemed to be gauging whether or not all the other Romulans had gone through. After a bit of nudging stragglers into the void, Jim nodded, and tucked it closed.

Chekov shuddered. "What was that?"

"What was what?" Scott asked.

"Just..." Jim waggled his head side to side. "Y'know. Closing heaven. A heaven. _That_ heaven."

"Like you do," Chekov agreed.

"Wait," Scott demanded. " _That_ Heaven? Are there more than one?"

"Apparently," Chekov said, rolling his eyes as though Scott's questions were ridiculous, as though most Terrans believed in more than one afterlife.

"Will the paw grant him new life?" Spock asked quietly, stroking his thumb over Jim's knuckles. "The Other Spock," he clarified when the others looked confused. "He used the wish to join his Jim, but that Spock is a ghost, is he not? He will need a physical form.

"Oh, that." Jim shook his head. "No, he won't need anything. His Jim is dead."

"What!" Chekov exclaimed. "Dead! But that is terrible!" His expression went deeply sad. "Poor other Pavel."

"Other?" Scott asked.

Jim grinned at Chekov. "I don't think other Pavel was a vampire. From how Other Spock reacted, and how his mind looked, we either had no interaction with the community, or it doesn't exist." He looked back out the window, watching the _Narada_ drift aimlessly in the dark. "Other Spock was so old, y'know? The rest of us were only average humans. We've probably been dead for ages. Old Spock's wish didn't need twisting of reality or creation of new bodies or anything like that. The paw took him back through to their world-and itself with him-and now he's in whatever heaven his Jim went to." He smiled back at Spock. "Happy, I think, after a long, sad life."

Spock squeezed Jim's hand. "There are worse ends. How do you know the paw will not twist it?"

"I don't." Jim gestured toward the turbo lift that would bring them back up to the bridge. "But if it does go weird, it'll go weird in their own reality, with their own specialists to take care of it. I don't really care that the monkey's paw exists, Spock. I care that it stays where it was made. We have our own paw somewhere in this world already, we don't need another."

"I think I'm missing a few key definitions," Scott said while following them.

"Soon," Jim said with a grin. "We can explain it to the others and you all at the same time."

"What I would like to know," Chekov said, pressing the button to call the lift, then stepping aside so they could go in first, "is what he meant by _red matter."_

"It was like this anti-matter stuff that could make black holes." Jim gestured expansively. "The Federation figured they could drop it into the Romulans star and stop it exploding."

They stared at him. "But then their sun would be gone," Chekov pointed out. "Romulus would spin out into empty space and freeze. All the Romulans would still die...?"

"Why did they not simply evacuate the planet?" Spock demanded. "Surely they knew the star was becoming unstable decades in advance. Stars do not merely _explode_ on a whim."

"Can I get a sample of that stuff?" Scott added.

Jim held up his free hand in a defensive motion. "Hey, you're preaching to the choir here, I think it's dumb too. Probably because," he continued over their protests, "it was a _function of the paw._ The red matter, Spock's failure, the tunnel through to this world-all so Ayel could serve Nero, be necessary to him, a cornerstone of his life and missions. Which means no," he told Scott, "you can't get any, because it doesn't exist anymore, because the paw's gone now."

"That is crazy," Chekov said weakly, seeming overwhelmed by the magnitude of Ayel's error.

"Aye," Scott agreed. "It could have been a useful material."

"The tragedy would have built," Jim pointed out, opting to ignore Scott. "One wish on the other, escalating to this mess, all built on Ayel's love."

"That is not love," Spock insisted.

The turbo lift opened onto the bridge. Kit sat just in front of the door, tail lashing. "Love?" she echoed, flicking one ear. "Love is a many splendored thing."

"Love," Jim added, "lifts us up where we belong."

"All you need is love," Sulu chimed from his console.

"No more archaic movie marathons," Chekov laughed.

Spock resolved to investigate the reference later.

"We saw the ship collapse," Kit continued, scrunching closer to the deck to wiggle her haunches before leaping up into Jim's arms. He had to release Spock's hand to catch her, which, while not preferable, was probably for the best. It freed Spock to cross to the lone science station, where he could check the readings recorded as the wish was made and the _Narada_ fell into its true state. "Well done."

"So what happened?" Sulu asked, swiveling around to look at them.

"Monkey's paw," Jim said. Sulu made a disgusted noise of understanding.

Scott flailed a hand at him. "Does everyone know what this is except me!"

McCoy placed a tricolor roughly in Jim's face. "Not one of them had the sense not to wish on that?" he demanded.

"I don't either," Uhura volunteered.

Jim shrugged. "It was only the one of them making wishes, and he had no idea what he had. Just that it made his dreams possible."

"While fucking over untold numbers of people!" the doctor snarled.

"Does somebody want to explain this to me?" Uhura asked. "You might all know every last thing there is to know about magic but some of us are novices."

"I also have questions," Chekov added, touching Sulu's shoulder before taking his seat. A sign of comfort, or to assure him everything would be well? "I might be vampire, but I consider myself no less of a novice. I saw the old Spock make his wish, and then the _Narada_ fell apart, but I do not know how the events connect."

"I do not know how _any of this,"_ Scott began, cut off by Chekov running over to grab him and deposit him in one of the free seats.

"If you will be quiet," he said, "now Jim will explain." He zipped back over to his place and turned to Jim expectantly.

Scott opened his mouth, one finger held up in protest, then abruptly deflated. "Sure," he said. "I'm listening."

Jim held his arm out so McCoy could begin injecting him with a series of hypos for which Spock did not understand the need. "Okay, so, basically there's this hyper-powerful object called a monkey's paw. Ayel found one in his reality and made a wish-he gets five, one for each finger. The wish was some form of _make Nero love me_ or _make Nero notice me_ or something like that. Which seems really cute, like, on the surface, but the prime directive of the paw is to get more energy by answering bigger and bigger wishes. So Ayel gets what he wants by the paw causing a catastrophe. He wishes to be helpful to Nero through the fallout, which causes an even _bigger_ catastrophe, so on and so on until they rip through the very fabric of their world into this one."

"The old Spock got pulled into their mess somehow," Sulu guessed, "and died."

Uhura startled. "He _died?_ But then how did he-"

"A ghost," Sulu said, ticking one shoulder at her incredulous expression. "It's easier to tell the more of them you see, but he was clearly a ghost. He didn't seem to realize it, which doesn't actually make him not one, just a little more complicated."

"Why didn't you exorcise him?" Jim asked curiously, finally free enough of McCoy to settle in the captain's seat. A product of his exhaustion, no doubt: he had previously refused to take the seat, likely feeling he had no right to it.

"Why didn't you?" Sulu shot back, then grinned. "I figured if you had us go all the way down to the cells to pick him up rather than just sending him along to the other side like you started to do with the Romulans, he must be part of your plan, whatever that was."

"I did not know he was a ghost." Chekov pouted when Sulu turned to him. "You might have mentioned."

"I didn't want to tip the old guy off. A panicking Vulcan wouldn't exactly have helped."

"So there's a series of catastrophes leading to this moment," Uhura interrupted. "Which is apparently when a bunch of inter-dimensional Romulans decide to blow up Vulcan, I think you said. And you beat them by...stealing a ghost?"

"Liberating a ghost," Jim corrected. He scratched Kit's head when she butted into his wrist. "We needed him to make a wish."

Uhura twisted one hand through the air. "Isn't wishing what caused this whole mess in the first place? How would more wishing help?"

"I saw it work," Chekov said, "and even so I do not quite understand."

"Old Spock's wish was to be with the person he loved most of all," Jim said. "Not someone _like_ that person, or a facsimile, or _to be loved,_ but just...to be with him. No strings, no expectations." He smiled down at Kit with a sad, fond expression. "It was such a simple wish, for a good, simple feeling. And there was really only one way to grant it: Bring Old Spock back through to the other universe, so he can be with his...what was the word?" he asked, turning to Spock, who blinked in surprise.

"What word, Jim?"

"The one he used in the wish. Remember?"

"T'hy'la," Spock murmured, feeling it resonate down in the marrow of his bones.

Jim nodded. "That's the one."

"He has a t'hy'la?" Uhura blurted, eyes wide as she looked between Spock and Jim. "Does that mean _you_ have-"

"Immaterial," Spock interrupted.

Jim looked...not suspicious so much as intrigued. "What does it mean?"

Uhura drew in a deep breath.

"How did the older Spock's wish cause the _Narada_ to collapse?" Spock asked.

Uhura smirked before slowly crossing one leg over the other, steepling her fingers to look at Spock over their tips. "Interesting. What did you say this t'hy'la's name was?"

"I must insist we focus," Spock told Jim. "Mr. Scott is still quite confused, and Sulu's questions have not been answered."

"I'm fair entertained as is," Scott said, grinning madly. "Don't focus on my account. I'm sure we'll get there in time."

"Jim," Spock said firmly.

For a moment, Jim looked ready to press his question. Then he shook his head. "Well, it brought the monkey's paw back to its original universe, right?"

"Whipped," Uhura coughed into her fist, grinning when Kit started to snicker.

McCoy rolled his eyes and looked out over the wreckage of the _Narada._ "So not even a paw's strong enough to hold up its enchantment with that much distance, huh?" He shook Jim's nearest shoulder. "Clever."

Jim grinned up at him. "Old Spock went home, to the person he loves most in the universe, who died a long time ago, which means now they're together in a cozy heaven they can spend the rest of eternity exploring together."

"Why do you keep saying it that way?" Scott asked. "Like there's more than one heaven?"

"Because there are," Sulu said. "Most people go to the one closest to where they died, although psychics or the spiritually strong or people with friends in high places can pick which they go to. How do you know older Spock's special someone's dead?" he added to Jim. "Did he have a-" He wiggled his fingers at Jim "-y'know, _dead loved one_ aura, or something? You picked that up just looking at him?"

"Rude," Kit sang from Jim's lap, tail flickering around her. Jim wrinkled his nose in agreement.

Sulu rolled his eyes. "You've seen stranger things on people. Why not this?"

"The older Spock initiated a meld with Jim," Spock said, eyes on the readouts rather than any of the other crew. "I presume Jim learned it then."

"Eh." Jim twitched a shoulder. "Not really." Spock looked at him in confusion, which-for some reason-made Jim smile. "I know myself," he said. "There's no way, in any universe, a Spock could be taken away and killed alone if there was a living Jim who knew him. Spock knew me, called me his friend, which means we were close, at one point. To not be with Spock at the end, Jim would have to already be dead."

"That is-" Spock shook his head, a little helplessly. "...Not a scientific observation."

Jim laughed, spreading his arms to encompass their ship, the _Narada_ in its broken pieces, perhaps even the entire situation. "What does science have to do with any of this?"

"I got some interesting readings off the _Narada_ while it was collapsing," Scott interjected. "There might be some science in this somewhere."

Sulu squinted at him. "Science in...the ghosts, zombies, and actual monkey's paw?"

Scott shrugged. "Science is a way of thinking," he said. "A way of skeptically interrogating the universe. You're in the universe, aren't you? You and the ghosts and zombies and monkey's paw-"

"Oh my," Kit chirped.

"Meaning," Scott continued, "there's likely a way to study you. Quantify you."

"Science you," Chekov snickered.

"How's that fit in with whatever you are?" Jim asked. "The way the ship likes you, does you favors?"

"I've got a chart," Scott said. "I think the fondness has to do with specific models, or with whether I've worked on 'em. Perfectly scientific."

"A chart?" Spock asked, intrigued despite himself.

Scott nodded. "I'm starting one for this-" He gestured around the bridge. "-experience too, if you'd like to help me with it."

"Will be entertaining," Chekov said. "Something fun to while away the days once we are in prison."

Everyone stared at him.

"Oh right," Uhura said. "We're absolutely going to be court-marshaled for this." She sighed, wilting slightly in her seat. "I'd almost forgotten."

"Only if they catch us," Sulu pointed out. "We don't _have_ to go back. We have a ship. We could explore the universe, discover new people and places, figure out what else out there is Other, without Starfleet."

Chekov brightened. "Like pirates."

"Vampire pirate." Sulu nodded. "You'd look good in the hat."

"Not exactly the future I'd dreamed of," Uhura sighed.

"You'll have to drop me off," Jim said with a bright smile. "I need to head back to Earth. It's time to face the music."

McCoy scowled and shoved a handful of sage into Jim's nearest pocket. "Not without me you're not."

"Why?" Chekov asked, distress rising visibly in the set of his shoulders and bow of his mouth. "Ignore the music. Starfleet is too busy to pay attention to us, even for a ship this lovely."

"I could talk her into helping us hide," Scott said. He inclined his head to Uhura. "Might need your expertise to get us listening for people looking for us, but it's not impossible."

"That's not the music I have to face," Jim said gently. "If you want to go, you should. This isn't your fight."

"The Beldam," Sulu breathed, face paling. "Are you sure?"

Jim nodded, then shut his eyes on a grimace. McCoy pressed a clear crystal, quartz, possibly, against his temple. It blackened and crumbled almost immediately. Jim's hands tipped with shadow claws, sharpening and fading as his inner battle waxed and waned. "I gotta go," he said, voice a little hoarse. "I pushed it too hard in the ship."

"You've been pushing it too hard for years," McCoy grumbled.

"Yeah." Jim gave him a weak smile. "You might be right about that."

"What can we do?" Chekov asked, out of his seat and at Jim's side faster than Spock could track. "You are my sire. What can I do for you?" He reached for Jim, to offer him comfort or support.

"Don't," Jim snapped, eyes flashing open, pale as starlight, dark as the sea. Chekov flinched away, hurt obvious in his face. Jim took a deep breath, blowing it out slowly through his nose. "It's better if you don't touch me," he said evenly. "I would- _She_ would make me-"

Chekov stepped back. "I will plot a course for Earth," he said, calm and calming, back at his station before the words finished forming. "Is there anyone we can contact for you?"

Jim's head jerked in a shake. "No one who could help is connected enough to reach. I think we're a little on our own. Once I'm gone," he told Sulu, "you should-"

Sulu scoffed, paying more attention to his work as he piloted them away from the _Narada_ than Jim's no doubt selfless plea. "We started our friendship negotiating the rights to kill a siren, you think a little Beldam battle is gonna turn me off? I'm going to be there, Jim, right with you, all of my grandmother's strongest wards shoring up your will." He turned just enough to tick an eyebrow at Jim. "How're you gonna make me leave?"

"He is my sire," Chekov complained to Sulu. "If you are there, then of course I must be there too! You can draw strength from me," he insisted, blinking across the room to hover over Jim's shoulder, carefully not touching. "Maybe I cannot fight for you, but I will stay very calm and determined, and you can pull from mine when you need to. I will be...what is word?" he asked McCoy.

The doctor blinked at him. "Reservoir?" he offered.

Chekov nodded firmly. "Da. Reservoir. You must call on me when you have need. Is shaping up to be big battle. You will need me!"

"We're going to warp," Sulu said.

"Good." Chekov reappeared in his seat at the helm, checking his calculations and trajectory. "We will get back quickly, and defeat the Beldam, and then we will take care of Starfleet."

"I'm certainly not going to abandon you," Scott said. "You're the most interesting thing that's happened to me in _years_. I can't say I see you ending up in prison, to be honest. I don't think you've got it in you. None of you," he added, glancing around the bridge.

"I spent too long hunting you down to throw you away now," Uhura agreed.

Spock didn't say anything. He didn't need to; his offer to fight the Beldam stretched all the way back to their mutual childhood, to a broken church and the first seed of a new resolve to stay with Jim, at Jim's side, despite any trials he would have to face to be there. If Vulcan and his mother could not keep him from Jim, what chance did a Beldam have?

Jim's eyes met his, filled with fear and promise, fighting even now against the bubbling invasion of the button's maker. "Okay," he said. He tried a smile. The effort was kind, although he didn't quite manage to make it convincing. "Honestly, it'll be good to have you there."

"Where will we go?" Chekov asked. He swept a hand over his console. "I can take you anywhere you want."

"I don't know," Jim admitted. He glanced sidelong at McCoy. "Once, I would have said a cottage in Mississippi. It was isolated, and warded, and the owner could make it practically invisible to people lacking a certain ability. But now-" He shrugged a little apologetically. "Sorry. I don't know."

"Not your apartment?" Spock asked.

Sulu was the one who grimaced. "Not with all those civilians around for the Beldam to snack on for a power boost."

"Does your grandmother have a place?"

"She has a lot of places," Sulu agreed. He hesitated before shooting Jim a rueful smile. "But they've all been purified over the course of centuries. Fighting a Beldam there, even in Jim's mindscape-"

"It'd destroy everything." Jim made a face. "Not worth it. We can find someplace better."

McCoy reached out to slap the back of Jim's head.

"Dense," Kit agreed, stretching on Jim's lap so she could prick her claws into his thigh. "Very dense."

"What was that for?" Jim asked, rubbing his head with a scowl.

"You are a goddamned idiot," McCoy grumbled. "There's only one place you ever could have done this battle. One place in all the world that would be safe enough, _strong_ enough, to withstand it while also supporting you."

"Where?" Jim demanded, echoed by nearly all the rest of the bridge crew.

"Duh," Kit said. "The penthouse apartment in New York where we first fell back into this world, straight through their wall."

"Oh," Jim said. He shook his head, more in annoyance at himself than disagreement. " _Oh._ I'm an idiot."

Sulu's expression filled with delight. "Are we going to-"

"I love the Doyles," Chekov exclaimed. "Does this mean Donna Henderson will be there too? I have not seen her in such a long time!"

"Who?" Scott and Uhura chimed. They grinned at each other.

"You'll see," Sulu promised.

"I need a drink," McCoy muttered.

Jim laughed. "Then we're heading to exactly the right place."

"Why's that?" Uhura asked.

"You'll see," McCoy told her, ominous and resigned.

* * *

They landed in what looked like an abandoned parking lot that actually belonged to a grumpy skeleton who owed Jim a series of favors. She wouldn't elaborate on the details, so Jim didn't either. Spock thought she looked familiar, or had a familiar psychic impression, which could mean he'd helped Jim help her at some point in the past. Regardless, neither the skeleton, who refused to give them her name, nor Jim would speak on it. So the others were forced to let it go.

The skeleton promised to conceal their ship for the strenuously negotiated forgiveness of three and a half favors. For an additional favor-forgiveness, she said she could wipe their trail from the upper atmosphere to her lot. Scott wanted to know how this was possible; the skeleton said her crew would do it, and that's all he needed to know. Jim agreed, and they towed Scott toward the lot's entrance.

Sadie Doyle waited for them, peerless and resplendent, an enormous martini glass in one hand. A car idled behind her with Dave Henderson at the wheel and Donna Henderson leaning against the passenger door, twirling a lace parasol on her shoulder.

"Frank's at home," Sadie said, accepting the kiss Jim pressed to her cheek. Kit rubbed against her ankles with a loud purr, greeted Donna similarly, then leapt into the car to sit on Dave's lap. "He's setting up. You know how he hates having to go outside, darling. We're all ready for your big-!" She frowned into the rim of her glass. "What was it again, Jim dear?"

"A battle," he said, holding his arms open to wrap Donna in a tight hug when she approached.

"Just an ordinary battle," his adoptive mother insisted. "Nothing too scary. We'll knock it out in no time! Right?" she called back to her husband.

"You are, as ever," he replied, "correct in your assessment."

Sadie smiled at the others clustered behind Jim. "Hello," she said, raising her glass in a toast to them. "I'm Sadie. Are you here for Jim? I'm afraid I'm rather indisposed, if you're here for anything else."

"No," McCoy said, expression torn as he attempted to remain professional while struggling with something like hero worship. "We're here for Jim. To help him."

Chekov flashed over to Donna, hugging her around the back since she was still embracing Jim. "It is so good to see you, Donna! How have you been?"

Donna patted his hand. "Right as rain, Pavel! We'll catch up once Spock and Jim and Bones get to it."

He nodded firmly. "I will be reservoir for Jim."

"Good man," she said with a hard smile. "You know how important he is. That's wonderful."

"Well," Sadie interrupted, "this is simply delightful, but it would be even _more_ delightful if were we in a position to refill my glass." She rattled the bare toothpick in its empty glass at the general assembly. "Monster fighting is ever so much more interesting with a martini, don't you think?"

"Yes," McCoy said immediately.

"I could be persuaded," Scott said, looking deeply curious.

"Well then." Sadie gestured toward the car. "Shall we?"

"We won't all fit," Uhura said. "I'd be happy to walk, if you'll give me the address."

"Don't be silly," Donna said, ushering everyone toward the town car. "I'll sit up front with Dave, then there's plenty of room for the rest of you in the back."

"But," Uhura tried to protest.

Donna opened the rear door. The car inside stretched out beyond anyone's understanding, enough room for all of them without having to squeeze.

Spock watched both Uhura and Scott struggle with what they were seeing. They traded an incredulous look, then laughed at each other's concern, linked arms, and climbed into the car. Sulu followed, Chekov after him, Sadie after him, then Jim. Spock waited until last so he could take a seat by Jim, closer than strictly necessary. Once they were settled, Donna shut the door behind them and got into the front. Dave started the car, pulling them smoothly into traffic.

When Spock looked up, Jim was smiling at him, warm and soft, with one hand held out. Spock took it.

 _Soon,_ Jim thought, letting Spock feel his ongoing war, his exhaustion and readiness to be done.

 _Soon,_ Spock agreed, layering his belief and determination over the cracks in Jim's confidence.

They arrived at the ancient, stately Plaza Hotel, which the Doyles called home. In a moment, they were high above the streets of New York, safe in the penthouse suite, surrounded by friends and family and booze, ready to go to begin. Spock took Jim's hands in his, sitting cross-legged together in a circle it had taken McCoy and Sadie nearly an hour to construct. Candles flickered against the wall. In the kitchen, Frank mixed drinks and dazzled Scott. Kit purred as loud as she could from her perch in Donna's lap, sending comfort in a low, ceaseless rumble. Jim and Spock took a last deep breath.

And declared war.


	6. The Beldam

AN: Okay well. I bought a house and got a dog and finished this monstrosity which I think I'm going to try to turn into a book? And it only took seven, nearly eight months. I'm so sorry D: I hope this is even a little bit worth the wait. It's twenty-two thousand words! Enjoy?

(I should probably have waited to post this until I was somewhat less tired so this could be pithy and entertaining. Sorry for that too!)

* * *

Chapter Six: The Beldam

* * *

Spock came to awareness of himself in an unfamiliar room. Or—

He thought it was a room.

The place he was in was closed on three sides. He sat in one corner, looking out into the darkness beyond the fourth, open wall. Something important was missing. He looked up and could not see where the walls ended. They stretched above him farther than his eyes could track, then tapered in against each other, closing him into a pyramid with an empty side.

He should go through the empty side. Something important was missing.

The walls became an oppressive presence around him, above him, crushing in against his psyche. Slowly, with more effort than he assumed it would require, Spock levered himself up. Despite how low the walls felt, they did not actually touch his head when he stood. Instead, they continued to give the impression of closing less than a foot above him. An illusion? He tried to focus on his surroundings, pick out details that might confirm what of this was real.

When he touched a hand to the wall on his left, it felt cold. Rough. It had the texture of unfinished wood. But he could not _smell_ the wood. If it were real, shouldn't he be able to smell it? To his eyes, it looked like...

He couldn't tell. It shifted and warped continuously, now painted white, now a dark brown. It dizzied him until he squeezed his eyes shut against it. The floor under his feet lurched, not enough to throw him down but so that his stomach twisted. When he opened his eyes, it stilled, firm as stone, while the walls continued to warp. Everything about the room appeared to conspire against his remaining there, so he took a step forward, toward the empty wall. And another.

A third.

Soon he stumbled out, panting, unsure why walking put such a strain on him. He glanced back at the room, wanting to understand.

Alarm jolted across his skin.

It was gone.

He stood now in a dim room filled with towering piles of clutter or garbage or—

Something important was _missing_.

"Spock!" a person called, somewhere out in the garbage. "Are you there? _Spock_!"

It sounded like a child, male, maybe, high and shrill with panic. Who in this place would know to call for—

Jim.

Jim.

He'd lost _Jim._

They were in Jim's mindscape, they'd come here to fight the Beldam, Jim should be here—

Jim had been a child when he lost his eye to the button. Could he be a child _now?_

"Jim," Spock tried to call. His voice was rough with disuse, as though he had a physical voice to _be_ rough in the mindscape. Concern hummed under his skin, but—e

 _Skin?_ He was in Jim's mind, how did he have—

"Spock!"

The Vulcan blinked and straightened, looking around for the source of the voice. He tried to focus, to gather himself enough so he could stretch his consciousness in Jim's direction.

It didn't work.

Shock jolted through Spock, causing him to draw in a deep, unsteady breath. So. He was either not in a mindscape anymore or...

Or?

 _"Spock!"_

Spock spun to face the voice, closer now. Jim? Or a facsimile of him? Did it matter?

 _Did_ it matter?

He assessed the garbage around him, which formed, he realized with a rising sense of trepidation, a sort of maze. The walls of detritus rose just too high to see over, even if he jumped. They were made of what looked like old toys, broken household appliances, wrinkled or stained clothing, all the refuse of Terran living. They weren't sturdy enough to climb. Spock began walking cautiously down the narrow hallway they created. After roughly one hundred yards, the walkway ended, splitting left or right.

"...Jim?" he said, projecting despite his disinclination to draw the attention of unfamiliar entities. Regardless of what else walked this maze, he had to find Jim. Even if Jim was somehow, unbelievably, a child.

"Spock!" the young voice cried.

Spock turned left, walking quickly without quite running. Toys and loose mechanical parts began to roll out of the walls, skittering under his feet as though drawn there. He stepped over or around them, once kicking a deflated black and white ball out of his way, never pausing in his effort to track down the voice.

The more of them he avoided, the more tumbled down. Soon he was taking long strides between the as-yet free spaces on the floor, arms out to help him balance.

A small toy car whizzed at his head.

Spock ducked, lifting one arm to protect himself as he increased his pace. A toy doll in the shape of a human baby flung itself into the back of his right knee, buckling it slightly as the doll made a warped sound almost like words.

The hall ended again in another fork; Spock darted right. He made it only a few steps before the walls began to crumple in earnest, dumping their garbage on his head and shoulders, knocking him around as he tried to push through.

To where? The maze could go on eternally. He had no idea where he was, or why, or what had happened to Jim. None of his skills at the meld seemed to have any impact on this...place. Reality. Whatever it was.

Spock fell.

The maze collapsed, burying him. He couldn't struggle, couldn't push up against it, couldn't get any leverage to wrench himself free. As the toys and machines continued to build up, he began to lose even the space for breathing.

Then, all at once—

Freedom.

Spock sucked in a greedy breath, coughing stale air out of his lungs as small hands grabbed one of his arms and pulled.

"Hurry," that same young voice said, tight with urgency. "You have to get up. There's something _in here_ with us!"

With a little assistance, Spock was able to get his feet under him. When he looked up, the maze stretched out around him once more, in order just as it had been, not a single shirt or doll out of place, as though the attack on Spock had never happened. As though something had—

Breathless, Spock looked down.

Jim stared back up at him, solemn, perhaps ten Terran years old. His hair was short and disheveled, his black and white striped shirt stained with something rusty red, hopefully actual rust and not dried blood. He wore faded jeans and battered sneakers. Altogether, it was a fitting outfit for a rambunctious young boy.

Except Jim had not been wearing a young boy's outfit when they went into the meld. He'd been wearing a red flannel shirt and Starfleet-issued sweatpants, claiming he wanted to be comfortable more than fashionable. Instead of shoes, he'd worn wool socks. Every inch of it came to him from a loved one: the shirt had once belonged to Dave; the sweatpants were purchased for him by McCoy as a joke when Jim first joined the Academy; the socks had been knit for him by Donna.

Jim wore artifacts of his family's love as a suit of armor, and not one of them had forced him to admit it. When he first took Spock's hands, sitting with him in a magic circle, Spock had felt the truth of it, bright beneath layers of anxiety and fear. Calling attention to the clothing then served no purpose except to potentially cause Jim embarrassment or additional stress.

Calling attention to the clothing _now_ might have...unfortunate results.

So Spock didn't. He tucked the information away, quiet in the back of his mind, and focused instead on Jim's well being. The boy seemed physically whole, worried but not frightened, and his eyes—

His eyes

They _matched,_ the same pale blue in the right and the left, unspoiled by the Beldam's button. Spock reached up, surprised to find his hand trembling, to run his fingers under the vibrant left eye, marveling and uncertain. "How is this possible?" he asked. Wonder filled his voice without his intent.

The little Jim looked puzzled. "What do you mean?"

"Your eye—" Spock shook his head, withdrawing his hand to fold it with its pair behind his back. "It's nothing."

Uncertainty filled Jim's expression. He touched his own left cheek. "Is there something wrong with it?"

"No," Spock said honestly. That, actually, was the problem: something _should_ be wrong with it. "How did you come to be here?"

"Don't you remember?" Jim asked.

"No," he said again, and offered nothing further.

Jim bit his lip in what might be worry. "Did you hit your head?"

"How did you come to be here?" Spock repeated.

"Are you mad?" Jim blurted.

Spock shook his head. "Merely curious. I have no memory of this place and found it difficult, approaching impossible, to navigate. And yet here you are, not in an expected way. I would ask that you do your best to explain."

The child curled one hand into the hem of his striped shirt. His expression washed with hurt, eyebrows pulled together, impossibly blue eyes wet with tears. "You _are_ mad at me. I'm not stupid; I can tell."

"You will have to believe me." Spock did his best to gentle his expression. "I am not experiencing any particularly strong emotion at all, much less one so volatile as anger."

"Prove it," Jim demanded, lower lip stuck out in a pout.

Spock extended his hand. "Shall I share my emotional state with you?"

Jim hesitated, then took Spock's hand. His eyes sunk closed under the calm Spock projected on him. "Sorry," he mumbled, refusing to relinquish his grip. "You're right; you're not angry." He shook his head, looking distressed now. "I can't seem to keep hold of my emotions here."

"Can you not guess why?" Spock asked.

The child shook his head again.

Interesting. Did he not realize he'd been regressed some twenty years? Was this place keeping the knowledge from him, or did it simply feel more familiar to be that age when facing this enemy?

Spock filed those observations away as well.

"How did you come to be here?" he asked for a third time.

Jim's hand twitched in his. "I'm not really sure," he admitted. "I...woke up here, I guess? And then started looking for you."

"The maze did not attempt to collapse upon you?"

"What?" Jim's eyes went large and round with shock. "No! It doesn't—" He looked around hesitantly, as though he didn't trust his surroundings. "It...doesn't look like a maze? At least not to me. It's just a basement. I mean." He kicked one of the walls. Distantly, Spock heard something bounce and rattle, as though someone in a different room had kicked a toy. "It's cluttered, but it's just a basement." He looked back over his shoulder. "It's... Actually, I think it's the basement of the old farmhouse in Iowa?" A faint shudder worked down his spine. "I didn't want to ever come back here, but I guess that makes sense."

"Why is that?" Spock asked, trying to see the room the way Jim did.

"This is what it looked like last time, too." His mouth pressed into a thin line. "She does that on purpose, I think. Makes her web look like where you come from, so she can improve on exactly what's wrong."

"This is the Beldam's web?" Spock moved even closer to Jim. "Are we here physically?"

Jim looked up at him. "I think we must be. It _feels_ real, anyway."

"The meld can mimic reality. After all, reality is experienced in the brain." Spock looked around again. "Can you lead us out of here, Jim? _Is_ there an out?"

"There was last time." Jim assessed the room around them that only he could see. After a moment, he nodded. "Yeah, I can see the stairs leading up to the kitchen, that should be an out." He tugged on Spock's hand, offering him a weak smile when Spock looked down at him. "Better stay close, okay? I'll lead the way."

"As you say," Spock agreed, resigned to another blind rush through gaps and spaces while Jim told him when to leap or step or freeze. "Is this how it looked the last time you were here?" he asked.

Instead of telling Spock to shut his eyes and jump, Jim led him down what looked like the left-hand split in the maze. Curious.

"This is what it looked like after I figured her out," Jim said, grim expression unsuited to his boyish face. "Or, well. After Kit showed me."

They walked a few minutes in silence—still down the walkway Spock could see—before Spock gripped the little hand in what he hoped felt like a comforting manner. "Will you not elaborate?" he asked. "If you feel comfortable sharing more details, I would like to hear them, and it seems we have the time."

Jim's breath shuddered out in a sigh. "It's— She makes wonders," he said, looking around at the room beyond Spock's vision. "And when you break out of her hold, the wonders kind of...collapse. So down here." His free hand gestured wide, nearly colliding with the wall. "It was...beautiful, y'know? She took this boring, awful room, and filled it with treasures and games like a carnival, all of them run by my step-father—my _Other_ step-father, just a puppet she made to please me. He was so much better. It was _all_ so much better. It was just—" One corner of his mouth curved in what might have been a sneer. "It was too good to be true."

Something about this—

They reached another split. They could go left or right, or at any point Jim could instruct Spock to shut his eyes and take him through the maze's non-existent walls in a straight-shot to the exit.

Jim turned right.

Spock stopped walking. He looked down at Jim, into his curious blue eyes, matching as they never did. As they never _should._

Something about this was _wrong._

Spock gripped Jim's hand hard, jaw locked as he pushed out with his telepathy. Instead of brushing Jim's consciousness as he usually did, Spock dove through their link to see what was there. He wanted to find Jim, of course, the warmth of him, underscored always with danger and the threat of violence. Maybe he would touch Jim's mind as it had been before the button, some echo of the purity that must have lived there before she'd wounded him.

If only he had found Jim.

Jim was not there.

Tethered to the other end of his hand was a sucking, gaping darkness, a void so complete it nearly defied understanding. The void noticed him. It reached for him with hungry, sticky threads. Spock gasped, gagged, and could not pull away.

The creature holding his hand grinned, too wide, a split in its face filled with sharp, jagged teeth. Its eyes melted as he watched, helpless to step away. Buttons glinted back at him, black, unending. Absolute.

 _Ravenous._

Spock could not pull away.

Somewhere, distantly, someone called his name.

The creature opened its mouth in an impossible, yawning stretch, wide enough to consume him.

A large, solid body slammed into Spock, knocking him aside. Shadow slashed at the creature, splitting it from shoulder to hip. It screamed, burst and sagged, sand pouring out onto the floor, emptying its skin until all that remained was a burlap pile.

"Are you all right?" Warm hands fluttered over his cheeks and down his neck to settled on his shoulders. After a moment, they squeezed tight, giving him a hard shake. "Spock! Are you all right?"

Spock blinked. Finally—finally—he looked up from the sand and broken sack. Blue eyes looked back at him. Mismatched. The sky and the sea. "Jim," he whispered. His lungs ached as though he hadn't taken a proper breath in hours. "Jim," he said again, and sucked in a deep, sharp breath.

One of Jim's hands cradled Spock's cheek. His expression filled with worry. "Did it hurt you?"

Almost without thought, Spock's mind reached for Jim's, seeking truth through the connection pressed into his face. He shut his eyes, listening, desperate.

Jim flared in senses, light and darkness, opals in onyx, a harmony of warring parts.

"I am unhurt," Spock said, resisting the urge to pull a piece of Jim into himself, let it live there in comfort, always within a thought of communication. That was not a decision to make on his own, without Jim's consent, so he resisted. He opened his eyes, covering Jim's hand with his even as he withdrew his mental touch.

...Withdrew? But they were in a meld. How could he—

"Where are we?" he asked, watching Jim's eyes fill with bitter unhappiness.

"With the Beldam," Jim said, jaw clenching in anger. "Somehow. She brought us into her web, just as it was the last time I saw it. Right before we killed her."

Spock consciously did not look at the sack and sand. "This...child. The creature. I cannot believe it is the Beldam."

"Ha! No." Jim glared at the remains. "One of her constructs. They're dolls or something. Just extensions of her will. She used them to flesh out the world, but only as long as they were tempting and obedient." He shook his head. "I don't know why she'd make one of me. She had weird ideas about love, though. I'd honestly rather not understand."

"It told me it saw this room differently than I do." Spock looked up toward the tops of the walls towering over them. "I see a maze, made of..."

"Garbage," Jim spat.

Spock inclined his head. "It told me it saw the open basement of what it claimed was your childhood home."

"Well, I don't know about seeing the basement." Jim took Spock's hand, stepped over the remains, and began leading him back in the direction he'd come from earlier. "That may have been a lie to trick you into going where it wanted you to. Which, in case you can't guess, was the wrong way. Come on, I remember this part. Let's get out of here."

"Then we are in a maze," Spock murmured. "You see it too."

Jim nodded, pulling Spock left at the first fork. "It probably did too, because this _is_ a maze. She turned it into a maze to trap me when we tried to escape this way."

"Will the way out you remember lead us from the house?"

"No. That's not..." Jim's inner war buzzed through their hands to itch under Spock's skin. He glanced back to give Spock a half smile. "Not really the goal." They walked a few moments in silence, then Jim sighed deeply. "I'll be honestly: I have no idea what's going on. _None_ of this should be here. The door we used back then, to get to this awful place and then get back, was in the basement, at the end of the maze." He gestured down the hall they were in using the hand holding Spock's, dragging the Vulcan's arm along for the motion. "I'm actually taking us to the _beginning_ of the maze because we're not here for an escape, we're here for the _Beldam._ And if she's here, she's upstairs."

"How are we here?" Spock asked.

Jim shrugged. "I don't have even the first clue."

Spock frowned. "Are there clues?"

"No." Jim grinned back at him. "It's an expression. What do you think, though?" He flapped a hand at the garbage wall. "You're the mind meld expert. How did we get here?"

Spock also had no clues. "I have a hypothesis," he admitted. "Though...there is, at present, no way of falsifying it, which I do not prefer."

"Well, shoot. Even your guesses tend to be better than most people's best-tested hypotheses." When Spock glanced at him, Jim smiled, nudging his side with an elbow. "You're not in the sciences for nothing. So lay it on me. We've got at least, what, five or seven minutes left in the maze." He towed Spock around another corner. "What's the hypothesis?"

"We are not in the Beldam's web."

Jim's disbelief flared hot against Spock's mental shields. The Terran glanced around, face impassive as doubt highlighted every way in which this scenario matched his memories. But Jim did not admit his hesitations. What he said was, "Go on, I'm listening."

Interesting. "I hypothesize the meld worked as intended," Spock continued, allowing Jim his private concerns. "We are not physically in the Beldam's web. However," he continued before Jim could phrase an appropriate retort, "consider that the Beldam has had many years of unfettered access to your mind. She has had an unbreakable, unblockable link to your mind, which we have seen, from a distance, as..."

"Poison," Jim said when Spock could not settle on the word he meant.

Spock inclined his head, following Jim around yet another corner. "Just so. In this instance, however, we did not wish to build blockades around her poison, to mitigate its damage or weaken it flow. We wished to battle it. Do you remember what we did?"

Jim slowed to a halt, eyes shut as he thought. Spock felt him reach inward, looking for the Beldam in his mind. He felt the jolt of fear when Jim couldn't find it, followed by slow realization. "We went into the poison," he breathed, eyes wide when they met Spock's. "She built all this in my _mind?"_

"That is my hypothesis," Spock agreed. "And yours is a particularly powerful mind, Jim. It always has been, around and under the Beldam. Adapting to her would have increased your natural ability. She had a lot to work with."

"Then how do we beat her?" Jim demanded. "She could be anywhere! She could be _all of this."_ He kicked the wall viciously. It swayed for a moment, raining four or five torn stuffed animals down on them, before settling. A harsh sigh huffed through Jim's nose. "Well, fine. So that puts my plan out of commission. Any ideas?" he asked, hands propped on his hips even though he still held Spock's in his right.

"Perhaps abandoning your plan is not necessary," Spock said. "Tell me what you thought would work, and why it cannot now. We will go from there."

Jim gestured expansively with his free hand. "I figured we'd go to her room. There's a den on the main floor where most of her...weirdness centered."

"Weirdness?" Spock prompted, wiggling his fingers against Jim's hip. Jim tightened his grip until he stopped.

"Like." Jim's nose wrinkled in distaste. "When she started to reveal herself, or, I guess, when hiding became less important, the world stopped...being like mine."

"I do not understand."

Jim heaved in a deep sigh. "I'm not sure how to explain it," he admitted.

Spock stroked a thumb over the back of Jim's hand. "Try your best, Jim. We do not know what detail will be important."

"Okay." Jim kicked one of the stuffed animals. "We might as well keep walking. We have to get out eventually. Come on." He started walking, tugging Spock along in his wake. "So, when we first came through, this place looked like my house on the other side. _Exactly_ like it. Every detail was the same, except...better. Perfect. We had a mirror in the front hallway," he explained, face turned away so Spock couldn't see it.

Intentional? Hmm.

"It was broken." Something in Jim's voice twisted, sharp as shards of glass. "We should have just replaced it or taken it down or— Well. I think my step-father kept it as a reminder."

"Of?" Spock asked, neutral as he could be, hoping to tempt further information before Jim realized what was happening.

From the amused half-smile Jim shot back at him, his attempt was unsuccessful. "Not really the point. The point is: the Beldam's front hallway had the same mirror, utterly identical, except it wasn't broken. It wasn't even _smudged._ Every facet was in its ultimate perfect state. The whole house was like that. She even tried to make the people like that, replacing them with her sack creatures." His jaw clenched. "It was all so fake. Even an idiot should have spotted it."

Spock yanked on Jim's arm, forcing him to stumble and turn around. "You were not an idiot," he said, flat and clear so Jim could hear his sincerity. "You were a child suffering unconscionably at the hands of adults who should have protected you." When Jim tried to turn away, Spock cupped his cheek with his free hand, waiting until their eyes met to continue. "Listen to me, Jim: None of what happened to you was your fault. Not before you went to the Beldam; not during; not after. You survived, and I must always be grateful for the bravery and strength it took."

Jim drew in a shuddering breath, emotions so tangled and confused even Spock could not sort through them. It did not surprise Spock when Jim's only outward reaction was to change the subject. "So she had this parlor," he said, stroking his thumb over Spock's before turning away to continue leading him through the maze. "It was toward the back of the house. Originally, it looked like it did on the other side, in the real house. The longer I was here, though, the more it changed. I don't know if her power to change it was failing, or if she just got...I don't know." He shrugged. "Complacent, maybe. She had to know I wasn't going to leave."

"What did the room look like when it was hers?" Spock asked.

"Buggy." Jim shot a grin over his shoulder. "There were there colorful armoires or something shaped like beetles, and her chair looked like one too, and they could all, like, skitter around. It was gross. Not as gross," he added firmly, "as, I mean, she had this box? It looked like gourmet chocolates, but they _wiggled._ She offered me one, called them cocoa beetles from _Zanzibar,_ if you can believe it."

"I see no reason to doubt it," Spock considered all the questions spawned by Jim's description. "Did you try one?"

Jim's whole body shuddered in disgust. " _Ugh._ No. I mean, they were— Did I mention the _wiggling?"_

"You did," Spock agreed, sending his amusement to Jim through their joined hands. "You also proved to be an adventurous companion when we were children. The likelihood of you tasting one versus refusing seemed roughly even."

"I don't even want to know what my allergies would have done," Jim sighed. "I probably would have puffed up and saved the Beldam the trouble of—"

"Perhaps," Spock interrupted, "this is not the opportune moment to joke about your death."

Jim looked back to smile apologetically. "If this were the Beldam's web," he said once he turned around again, "I would have bet she'd be in the beetle room. Since we're not—"

"I cannot guarantee the Beldam knows this is your mind," Spock cut in again, "and not her web. You killed her, did you not?"

"Yes." Satisfaction curled through Jim's mind, dark and gleeful. "We sure did."

Spock hesitated before asking, "How?"

"We cut off her head," Jim said cheerfully, "with a garrote that used to be piano wire. Head's up," he continued in the same haunting tone. "We're near the end of the maze. Well, the beginning."

Untruth crept from Jim's hand into Spock's. He had killed the Beldam, but not this way. Why would he lie about the method? What did it matter if she was strangled or...something else?

Did Jim's faith in Spock run so thin?

They stepped out of the maze together, into a small open area around the base of a set of dark, ominous stairs. Jim locked his eyes on the door at the top. Spock kept his focus on Jim, trying to understand. Longing to.

Jim startled slightly, glancing back at Spock with a confused half smile. "Everything okay?"

Ah. Their connection was starting to go in both directions. Inevitable, really, considering the strength of Jim's mind, how adaptive it had become under the Beldam's weight. She would have ruined him, and he resisted. Of course he would be sensitive to Spock's presence in her darkness.

"I am well," Spock said, not quite answering the question. Since he did not yet know how best to phrase what he himself wanted to know ( _why why why_ ), he did not ask.

Jim seemed to sense this—or at least enough of it to nod, albeit with noticeable reluctance. "Okay." He tipped his head toward the stairs. "Shall we?"

"Our plan is to find her, perhaps in the beetle den, and fight her." Spock stroked his thumb over Jim's comfortingly. "Though determined, it seems...vague. How shall we fight her? We have no phasers, no weapons of any sort. Is there still a piano we might take wire from? Or do you think we could overpower her?"

Jim looked at him in silence for a long moment before blowing out a sigh. He turned to sit on the stairs and run his free hand through his hair. When Spock attempted to release his other hand, though, Jim's grip tightened. "Don't," he snapped. His shoulders, bunched tight around his ears, dropped marginally. "Don't let go," he said, not quite looking at Spock while his face pinched with some unnamable expression, worried and fearful and resolute. "I feel...indistinct. Scattered. Like if you let me go, I'll dissolve into the air." His mouth twisted. "Into the maze. Into her web."

"Have you felt this way long?" Spock touched Jim's mind with more purpose than earlier, seeking a reason for his friend's unease.

"Since I got here." Jim shook his head. "And I don't even remember that very well. The only time I felt like me was when I was saving you from the doll." He looked up at Spock, something like panic building in his eyes. "Am I even here, Spock? If I'm only me when I'm with you, am I really here?"

Spock lifted his free hand to Jim's psy-points. "May I?" Jim responded by shutting his eyes and tilting his head to rest in Spock's palm.

To meld within a meld should be impossible. Or—perhaps a better word would be _needless._ How did one touch a mind one was already in? No Vulcan had ever experienced a situation like this, though, had never entered a mind to be caught in another's web living there. An enemy's web, slowly devouring its host, turning it into—

She was _turning_ Jim _into—_

Spock, at first, didn't understand what he was seeing. He went into Jim's mind and found...threads. Not through his mind but _of_ it. Something had taken his mind, his consciousness, his very self, and spun it into wire. Jim couldn't sense it, was likely so used to this configuration, creeping as a fungus into every nook and crevice, that it seemed normal. Despite the strength of his mental touch, Jim was still psy-null. No amount of meditation or focus would enable him to see the full landscape of his inner self.

So now he was part of the Beldam's trap. She had made of him a web, stretched wide over her darkness. If they failed, if she killed Jim and ejected Spock, this would be a handy stepping stone into the real world.

How could they save him? Spock's desperation welled outside his control, a tide of fear that threatened to drown him. If Jim was part of her now, how could they _save—?_

But then, had Jim not been part of the Beldam this whole time? For as long as Spock had known Jim, the Terran had carried the Beldam's button. They all knew it was a link she used to feed off his life. It took longer, due to his having killed her, but was no less inevitable for it. Spock knew that. He'd used his time on Vulcan to prepare himself for this fight.

Why fear it now?

Spock had vowed, as a teenager, to sever the Beldam's connection to Jim. He would fight her at Jim's side, using the tools and weapons unique to his heritage. Until now, he had assumed that would mean cutting the button's link. Now it seemed that had been presumptuous. To break the button, to kill the Beldam, they would first have to unravel this web made of Jim.

Well, fine. So they would.

He tried to show the web to Jim, to get his impressions on its weaknesses, but it seemed Jim could not be guided through any more layers of his own consciousness. Spock layered comfort over Jim's rising distress in an absentminded way, most of his attention on the web. In the outside world, a spider's web could be pulled down with a simple wave of one's hand, but this was too big. What could they do instead?

Collapse it. Break its contact points, its anchors, and let it fall. Spock looked for the anchors and found them, three distinct places that darkened and strained the web.

But where?

"Jim," Spock murmured, trying to share the...the _feeling,_ the knowledgeof the anchors with him. "She has tied you into this world. Made it of you. We must tear it down to free you and weaken her. Do you see this?"

Jim's struggle to understand echoed through his mindscape. His frustration mounted as his attempts failed. "No. Can you describe it? Do you think describing it would help?"

"Perhaps," Spock allowed. "Depending on the purpose. I do not think I could describe it well enough for you to develop a mental picture."

"You could give me the highlights," Jim huffed, frustration bubbling through their link.

Spock tilted his head. "The thought occurred to me as well." Jim looked chastised, although that had not been Spock's intention. "I believe that our best bet of undoing this web is to pull out its anchor points and letting it collapse under its own weight."

"You think it'll be that easy?" Jim asked skeptically.

"That would depend," Spock pointed out, "on how easy it is to destroy the anchors."

Jim made a rough sound. "Sorry, Spock." He cleared his throat. "I know I'm being a dick. You're just trying to help and I keep—"

Spock touched Jim's cheek with his free hand. "It is well, Jim." He pushed a sense of ease and comfort through their link: a Vulcan smile. "You are under enormous pressure, and the risk to myself is comparatively low. Your emotional reaction is expected." Jim winced, so Spock tried again: "What I mean is that I understand why you would be short with me and do not hold it against you."

"That's not much better," Jim sighed. "I should try harder to be grateful for your help."

"Later," he said. Jim started at him, eyes wide as flashes of innuendo passed from him into Spock and back until they were both flushed.

"Oops," Jim said weakly.

Spock school his expression. "Later," he said again. "For now, we must focus. From what I saw, there were three anchors. Does that number hold any meaning here?"

"Yes," Jim said, surprised and then resigned. Then, thankfully, his whole being filled with purpose. His shoulders straightened as he stood up from the stairs. "It holds a lot of meaning. In fact, I know exactly where we have to go." He turned to face the maze. "She made wonders, right? Places and things to amaze and delight, so I'd pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."

A frown creased Spock's forehead. "The man behind—"

Jim waved him off. "An old quote from an old movie. Never mind. The important thing is: She made _three_ wonders."

Spock's confusion cleared. "Ah. The three anchors."

"Got it," Jim agreed. He gestured toward the maze behind them. "Might as well start with this one. How do you figure we destroy it? Fire?"

"Certainly not." Spock frowned. How _did_ they destroy it? "Let us not approach the problem as a behemoth; perhaps each _wonder_ will have its own weakness."

Jim nodded. "Makes sense."

"Did the maze have a heart?" Spock asked. "If it has a central point, perhaps we might find the key to its defeat there."

"I guess," Jim said, sounding reluctant.

Spock cocked his head, considering Jim. The Terran seemed...unusually morose. Too hopeless, for how early into this battle they were. "Have faith," he said. Jim looked away rather than meeting his gaze, even when Spock ducked his head to try and force the issue. He considered his situation: without faith that they would succeed, that there was a way to push through to victory, their mission was doomed from the start. Jim's optimism often produced the seeds of his best, wildest ideas. They needed him at his best, not in despair.

Not half broken.

Healing the Beldam's intrusion would be the work of years, which they did not have. How to shore up Jim's faith?

Chekov, of all people, came to mind. Chekov, a novice to what he was and the world he lived in, who never feared, never wavered, whose faith burned in his eyes to anyone who spent even a moment looking. Chekov, who had volunteered to be a reservoir of power for Jim to draw on. But how to tap into that power?

Jim jolted unexpectedly, blinking in surprise as he finally looked at Spock. "What is that?"

Spock glanced at their hands, linked in a solid conduit. "What is what?"

"Don't be coy," Jim said, annoyance shifting from him into Spock. "Just answer the question."

"I will," Spock promised, opening his own confusion for Jim to see, "once I understand what you mean."

"You just—" Jim made a frustrated sound. "You did something just now, it felt like..."

"Like?" Spock prompted.

Jim lifted his free arm, pantomiming what looked like floating or buoyancy. " _Light._ Not sunshine light, just...less _heavy._ Like you lifted the whole room off my shoulders." He swallowed hard. "Like maybe we're not totally _fucked._ "

Interesting. Did Jim feel it when Spock even just thought of Chekov? Spock studied Jim's face closely as he brought forward a memory of Chekov after they fought the _Narada_ , wanting for nothing outside of his sire's approval.

Jim shuddered, eyes falling shut as breathing caught and skipped.

Spock's next action was more a product of instinct than thought. He seized the momentum building in Jim's emotions, offering every memory he had of Chekov before reached into the Terran's mind to look for more. He found Chekov in every bright spot, every corner of joy, of _belief._ It was a simple trick to turn those remembered emotions back at Jim. Even a psy-null mind could layer similar enough emotions. Soon Jim seemed to glow with it, with the faith borrow from his dear little friend. Shackles of darkness fell away from him on a level just beyond what Spock could see. But he felt it.

They both did.

Chekov's faith settled over Jim like a cloak. Only then did Jim open his eyes, burning with new determination. "So," he said, warmth and humor replacing despair. "What was that?"

"Cheating, I think," Spock admitted. "I am not sure."

"Something you learned mind meld prodigy school?" Jim teased.

Spock shook his head. "No. I do not think other Vulcans would think well of what I did, but I—" He lifted his shoulders in a shrug. "I had to. It worked."

Jim grinned at him. "Sure did. That bitch did something to me, didn't she? It felt like..." He shook his head. "I don't know. Bad. Heavy."

"Hopeless," Spock offered.

"Ha!" Jim stabbed a finger at him. "Yes." He summarized his feelings on the topic with a delicate full-body shiver, as though he could shake it off. "Anyway. It worked! We'll figure out the how of it later." Then he turned to face the maze, shoulders squared against it. "You were right, there _is_ a middle of the maze. If it's still there, it'll be a little, like, courtyard." He made an incomprehensible hand gesture. "We had a picnic there, me and— They set it up in a gazebo, if you can believe it. I think that might be the anchor here. It certainly seems important enough."

"Perhaps all we shall have to do is destroy the gazebo," Spock said, letting a bit of his optimism rise into Jim.

He got a crooked smile in return. "Well, stranger things have happened." After one last breath to steel himself, he stepped into the maze, drawing Spock with him. They remained mutually disinclined to release the firm grip they had on each other's hand, which was...

Well. Not _fine_. Not even normal, or unremarkable. For a Vulcan, it meant something, to be this continually tied into another person. It must have specific meaning for a Terran too, as Spock had never witnessed any two cadets so closely linked for such an extended time. So it meant something.

But Spock and Jim as Spock-and-Jim had meant something for a long time now. Perhaps one day they would investigate what. Perhaps they would let the truth of it grow between them, undisturbed. For now, they moved through the Beldam's maze, tethered, a unit in two pieces, together in the face of a greater enemy.

At first, their trek was tedious. Jim seemed confident in his ability to navigate the corridors, as though he somehow still remembered all the twists and turns from his childhood. Spock did not protest; with Jim, the odds were about even as to whether he actually remembered or just had a plan in case they hit a dead end.

The walls began collapsing.

A stuffed toy tumbled down, landing a few steps behind them. Jim did not pause, but he did glance back. His expression shifted, a shadow of unnamable emotion that shot a spike of concern through Spock. Neither of them spoke even though their pace increased. Perhaps if they did not acknowledge the toy—

Another toy fell, followed immediately by a third. They turned a corner and were immediately forced to dodge a small pile of detritus knocked clear of the wall by...something. "Come on," Jim snapped, stepping lightly over the strewn garbage to pull Spock into a run.

"Jim," Spock began.

"Come on," he said again, low and hard.

They ran. Behind them, licking at their heels, the Beldam's maze collapsed. It tried to block the corridors Jim sought, though he did not allow it. Sometimes they scrambled over low, swelling barricades. Sometimes Jim simply threw his shoulder against the pile to topple it. Occasionally Spock recognized a trap first and yanked Jim around to avoid it. Unfortunately, for all the world seemed real, they were still in Jim's mine, so it fell to Jim to work on the majority of the "heavy lifting", as the Terran phrase went.

Spock thought of Chekov and passed his faith to Jim.

The most exciting moment of their flight happened when Jim said, "This way!" on a laugh and proceeded to run _up_ a stack of shifting garbage to clamor atop one of the walls. They ran along it together, until it, too, collapsed. Spock fell forward against Jim's back, using his psychic advantage in this place to stabilize himself as they surfed back to the ground, running even as they landed. Jim's delight glowed in Spock, who held on tight.

Eventually, inevitably, they reached the center. Spock learned what a gazebo was: a small, roofed structure with open sizes. This one was octagonal, bearing simple waist-high lattice panels on seven sides. The eighth side had smaller panels framing an opening attached to a set of three small steps.

A boy stood in the center of the gazebo, perhaps fourteen years old, with brown hair and black button eyes. His mouth yawned in a threatening grin. "Hi there, Jimmy," he said. "Finally came back to play! Just like I always knew you would."

"It's not a game," Jim said, shifting where he stood as though he couldn't decide if he should prepare for an attack or approach the creature head on. "It never was."

"We are all toys in Mother's game," the pupped said, voice melting low and syrupy like a music box winding down. "Even you."

Jim's lips pulled back in a snarl.

Spock squeezed his hand. "Must we disable this being?" he asked, studying the Beldam's creation. "Is it the anchor? Or the gazebo?"

"My money would be on him," Jim said, low and furious. His free hand flexed as though he was trying to contain a strong drive toward violence.

"Aw." The being's slow, warbling voice held a ragged edge of mockery. "You would kill your own brother? Mother wouldn't approve."

"You are not," Jim snarled, "my brother."

"You're right." It tilted its head to one side at a hideous angle. A human's neck would have to be broken. "I'm _better_ than your brother. At least I didn't run."

"True." Darkness rose in Jim, viscous under his skin where Spock could sense it. Claws of it stretched out toward the Beldam's creature, nearly visible as its menace stretched. Jim released Spock's hand to square his shoulders. Shadows stretched long around him, even against the light. "But maybe you should have."

He struck.

The creature braced itself and was flung aside anyway. Jim's power crunched the gazebo like a depressurized ship in space. Its composite pieces scattered around them, embedding in the walls of the maze and slicing through the creature's sack cloth skin. Spock raised an arm to protect his face: needlessly, as it turned out. The shrapnel bounced off his sleeve without so much as snagging a thread.

Intentional?

Jim advanced on the creature, slow and inescapable as the tide, malice in every line of his body. Spock knew he would win this confrontation, would crush his opponent as easily as the gazebo. To what end? The creature would be gone, the Beldam's web weakened. Would that matter if Jim lost himself to her power? Even now, it ate its way across the floor and up Jim's limbs in equal measure, consuming him and his enemy. The Terran planted himself in the epicenter of the gazebo's destruction, raising his arms to conduct the shadow around him like an orchestra.

The Beldam creature exploded, torn apart by Jim's tainted power, then whipped around in a maelstrom of violence that built ever larger with Jim, and Spock at his side, safe in the eye. Within moment, the vortex flattened all the towering walls around them, turning the twisting maze into so much confetti. Eventually—inevitably—the winds and fury boiled higher than even the basement could contain. Jim's power pushed out, up, _away,_ building pressure until Spock felt his ears might burst. He waited, hoping Jim would regain himself, realize his excess and draw the back inside.

He didn't. The storm rattled the floorboards above their heads, reaching a thousand spindly fingers like spider's legs into developing cracks to pry at the very foundations of the house in Jim's mind. If Jim didn't make it stop, they might all be lost

If he _couldn't_ make it stop, their end might be worse than simple destruction. One of Jim's hands spasmed, a small, concentrated effort that went nowhere. He could not even form a fist as the bedrock of his resistance.

How could Spock help him? Chekov's hope would do nothing here. Jim needed to fix the crack in his control, to repair, to—

Oh.

To _heal._

Spock stepped forward, lifting one hand to wrap it around the back of Jim's neck. He shut his eyes—habit, here, more than anything—and drew on all the memories Jim possessed of Dr. McCoy. In a moment, he had them, a twisting, determined knot of healing stones and tea and meditation techniques and even an exorcism. Spock let them pool in the space between his palm and Jim's skin for a single, lingering moment.

 _Damn it, Jim,_ the memories whispered.

Spock flattened his palm, giving McCoy's presence no avenue except forward, back into Jim from where he'd come. In a heartbeat, he filled Jim, every corner of him, with light and strength and _purpose._ With healing.

The darkness flickered. The storm crumbled. Jim took a deep breath.

Everything settled.

Beneath his hand, Jim began to tremble. "Are you well?" Spock asked, crowding close to peer at his face. He stroked his thumb along Jim's hairline in thoughtless comfort.

Jim's mouth thinned into an unhappy line. Something nearly like panic fizzled under his skin. "She nearly got me this time," he said, low and broken. "If you hadn't—"

"There is no profit in considering what might have been," Spock interrupted firmly. "You protect us perhaps more vigorously than you intended. Nevertheless, we are protected. The creature is destroyed. The _maze_ is destroyed."

"And the anchor?" Jim asked with a heavy, shuddering sigh. "I don't feel any different."

Spock looked at him, layering as many types of sight as he could, and admitted to himself that Jim did not appear any less tied to the landscape than he had been when they first arrived. He turned his sight outward, searching the evenly distributed detritus for an idea.

Something amid the tattered garbage glowed. Spock slid his hand down from Jim's neck to take his hand and draw him toward it. They knelt together, Jim confused but resolved to wait, Spock sifting through thee garbage for—

A small sphere of glass, clear but for a fan of color at its center. It cast light and shadows around it, disproportionately heavy for its size.

"One of Sam's marbles," Jim murmured, reaching out to it in what seemed to be a subconscious motion. His eyes took on a gleam not unlike the odd little object. As though they were reflecting each other.

Spock drew back and stood, releasing Jim's hand to take another step back when the Terran protested. He dropped the marble on the ground.

And crushed it under the heel of his boot.

The basement _screamed._ Spockrealized he'd covered his ears in an effort to protect himself from it only in retrospect, when Jim grabbed his wrist and had to pull it away from his ear to draw him into a run. As they fled, the room collapsed around them, pulling into itself like light at the edge of a black hole. It did not leave empty space behind; the room utterly ceased to exist, as true and incomprehensible as existence before the Big Bang. The deepest primal pieces of Spock's mind spooked like a common Terran horse at the depth of nothing closing in around them. Adrenaline surged through his veins. He had Jim hefted over his shoulder and was sprinting up the stairs with him before the first inkling of a thought about such a plan could suggest itself to him.

They burst through the door that way. Spock tripped as the basement vanished behind them, leaving a smooth wall and yellowing wallpaper where the basement bad been. He and his precious cargo tumbled to the ground, panting and frantic, immediately clustering as close together as they could.

"What the fuck," Jim managed after a solid minute of clinging to each other while staring at the wall.

"I have no explanation to offer," Spock said, calm and even as he patted Jim down without even looking at him. "Are you well?"

Jim swatted at Spock's seeking hands. "I'm fine, everything's fine, I—" He blinked, as though finally taking stock of himself. "I...feel fine?" The words came out half confusion, half wonder. Spock slid a hand over Jim's to feel the tangle of it. "Breaking the marble, it...I think it worked. I feel _different."_ He shut his eyes, Terran and button, basking in the sensation of distance from the Beldam, partial though it was. "How did you know to shatter it?"

"I did not know," Spock admitted, stroking his thumb along the soft skin on the inside of Jim's wrist. "I...guessed, I suppose you could say. Rather, I knew the item needed to be destroyed, regardless of its impact on the web."

"How did you know?" Jim asked. He gathered his legs underneath him as though preparing to stand, then tipped sideways to lean against Spock instead.

Agreeable. "It had an effect on you," Spock explained, leaning his head on Jim's. "On the button. You hardly seemed aware of anything else once you set eyes on it. I destroyed it to prevent its goal, whatever that was."

Jim blew out a long, low sigh. "Thanks," he said, relief and gratitude and something indescribably warm shining bright through every place they touched.

Spock nodded minutely, careful not to unbalance Jim's head. "It was only logical."

"It was that too," Jim agreed with a quiet laugh. He nudged Spock with his elbow. "Okay, spit it out. I know you were helping me back there, when the Beldam was making me despair, and also when she almost consumed me. How?"

"I am not fully sure myself," Spock admitted. "I could sense what she was doing, certainly, but had no good way of combating it. I thought you needed—hope. When I phrased the need to myself that way, our link offered a solution: Chekov."

Jim blinked. "Pavel? What about him?"

Spock drew upon Chekov's memories once more, stirring them in Jim, who shut his eyes to bask in it. "He has been a source of hope for you for many years now. And he did offer to be a repository of strength for you, had you need of it. So I...let you remind yourself of him. His hope."

"And when I was falling to her power?" Jim murmured.

"I am certain you can guess who I tapped for that." He teased out a strand of memory linked to any number of instances where McCoy's teas or rocks had saved Jim in the past.

"Bones." The word came out soft and reverent as a prayer. "But _how?_ They aren't with us. They stayed with the Doyles."

"At the risk of sounding cliché, Jim." Spock squeezed his hand. "They live in you."

Jim sat up to scowl at him. "That's terrible."

Spock shrugged. "What is, is."

"Well anyway." Jim stood, stretched, and offered a hand down to help Spock stand. "We should probably keep moving."

Though Spock required no assistance to get to his feet, he took Jim's hand. "Indeed." He looked around. "Where is the next wonder? Do you know?"

Jim's face twisted through a number of emotions before settling on a combination of distaste and resignation. "I can guess," he sighed, dragging his free hand over his eyes. "When I was here as a kid," he continued, beginning to walk toward a door leading outside, "there were three people other than the Beldam, each with a fun thing we could do. She picked the worst relationships I had and made them—" He shook his head, harsh and bitter. He glanced back at Spock, giving him a glimpse at a sour half-smile. "Better. Perfect. Everything I always dreamed they should be."

"A compelling lie," Spock murmured.

"Irresistible bait," Jim agreed, pushing the door open so they could walk out into the surrounding land. It seemed to go on for countless miles in every direction, though it _felt_ much smaller, close and oppressive. Another type of bait? Freedom, or the implication of it? "I certainly fell for it hook, line, and sinker. If Kit hadn't been there, well." He nodded toward the barn standing across the yard. "That'll be the second anchor, most likely."

"What is it?" Spock asked. "Besides a barn," he added when wicked amusement bubbled across their connection.

Jim smirked at him but said, "I should just let you find out on your own, keep the mystery alive, but that sounds like a good way to die needlessly, so: It's my step-father. Frank. And something fun we used to do."

"Something fun in the barn." Spock studies its lines, the light and dark of its wood and peeling paint, trying to understand the competing sense of safety and threat it radiated with growing intensity as they approached. "Did you have horses?" he guessed, more to distract Jim than out of any real sense of interest. Whatever they had done, Spock would help Jim fight a corrupted version of it soon enough.

"Ha! No." Jim shook his head, then tilted it thoughtfully. He led them to the large barn door only to stand in front of it, studying its weathered frame thoughtfully. "I mean, I guess _metaphorically?_ Metaphorical horses might have been involved."

Spock frowned. "Metaphorical...?"

"Wait for it," Jim said, and pushed the door open.

The barn groaned as they stepped into it, an ominous sound of threat and distress that made Spock's ears hum unpleasantly. Though the structure appeared sound, it gave a sense of rotting, slow collapse. Light filtered through high windows in a pale imitation of sun, illuminating rafters and a dirt floor and a red automobile with no top and its front compartment opened to reveal an old fossils fuel-powered combustion engine. Ah.

Horsepower, as the Terrans used to call it. As Jim once called it during a daring, ridiculous escape from Cerberus via a stolen vehicle not too dissimilar from this one At least that finally explained how Jim had known the proper method to "hot wire" it.

A man stood beside the driver-side door, holding a dirty rag in his hand even though everything else in the barn was perfectly clean. He did not move except to smile, blank and wide beneath his button eyes. "Welcome home, Jimmy," he said.

The sudden spike of Jim's anger surprised Spock, who was more used to patient, boiling fury when this particular Terran found himself caught up in battle. "Jim," he began, attempting to thread some of his own caution through Jim's volatile emotions.

Jim seemed unwilling—unable?—to let Spock's warning distract him. "Don't call me that," he snarled.

"Jim," Spock said, trying to draw him closer by their linked hands, trying to break through whatever means the creature was using to ensnare him. "Jim, listen to me, I believe this being is trying to—"

"But you used to like it." The Beldam puppet pressed a doughy hand against its own chest. "You used to like me. Didn't we have fun together, rebuilding this old thing?" It put one hand on the car, which flickered beneath his touch, going from whole and perfect to a crumbled ruin in a pattern like a heartbeat. "Maybe we should let you wreck it again and start over. Huh? Would you like that, Jimmy? Just the way things used to be."

"None of that was real," Jim spat. "None of you are real. Break it, fix it, it doesn't matter. It doesn't exist."

"This is not real either," Spock said, tugging Jim against his side but unable to make him look away. "This thing is angering you intentionally, Jim, do not—"

"That's a rude thing to say to your father," the creature said, smile fixed even as its face began melting around it, sliding down like wax in an oven. "You should apologize before Mother finds out. You don't want her feelings to be hurt, do you?"

"I want Mother to die," Jim said, fury funneled into a cruel smile. His intent crept through Spock's shields, painting shades of violence and revenge over Spock's deliberate calm.

"Later," Spock interjected, shaking Jim's arm to pull his attention. "At the moment, what we want is the anchor. What do you think it might be?" He nudged Jim toward the vehicle. "...Something large?"

Jim's head ticked to one side, nearly but not quite a shake, nearly but not quite looking at him. "Ah. No." A shoulder shifted in a rolling shrug, pressed so close against Spock that he could feel individual muscles moving. "Something related to it, though, I bet."

"Are you looking for this?" the creature asked, drawing a key out of the front pocket of its denim outfit. "Mother thought you might."

Jim's attention refocused like a laser sight. "Give it," he demanded, striding forward with his free hand held out.

"Ah ah." The creature drew the key back toward itself. "Mother wouldn't like it if I let you have another piece. And what Mother wants—"

"I will fucking kill you," Jim seethed.

"That's the trick, isn't it, Jimmy?" The creature's voice began melting as surely as its face, slurring through tone and diction. "We were never alive."

"Give me that key or I swear to god I will—"

It flipped the key up, letting its head flop back against its spine to catch the anchor in its gaping maw. What happened next couldn't really be called swallowing, though Spock did watch the small object work its way down the creature's sagging neck.

Jim coiled beside Spock, a feeling as physical as it was emotional. His hatred seemed alive, rolling under his skin like thunder in storm clouds. "You think that will stop me?" Jim snapped, hand wrapped so tight around Spock's it might have hurt, had Spock been Terran.

"It is goading you," Spock insisted. "You must resist its influence!"

"Influence to what?" Jim curled his lip at the creature. "I don't need any influence to tear this thing apart!"

"Temper, temper, Jimmy," the Beldam creature gurgled, scuttling back like it had tentacles rather than legs. Its torso, arms, and head flopped bonelessly with every movement. "What would Mother say?"

The sound Jim made then was a snarl, underscored by shards of darkness that spiked from his shadow off the floor and through the creature. Three of the shards hit, lancing through its right side, severing one arm. The others pierced the bar wall like arrows. Lines of black infection bled away from them into the wood, crumbling it like the passage of a thousand years.

As the creature laughed, oozing its way across the floor with unnatural speed, Jim struck. He left Spock, dropped his hand, coated his arms in shadows from elbows to fingertips, and launched himself at the creature. Almost immediately, Spock caught his breath: Jim was going to lose.

The Terran fought like a creature possessed, rabid and unfocused, displaying none of his usual skill for strategy. Dark Beldam magic poured from him, leaching back in through all the cracks it left in Jim's defenses, breaking him open to fill him up with all the power he hated. He had to seal himself against it, block the power and focus on retrieving the key. Their goal meant more than victory against this lowly, ruined creature. How could Spock help him remember it? Maybe he had other memories, like with McCoy and Chekov, that could return control to him.

But their connection was broken. Jim was too far, moving too fast, for Spock to grab him and reassert it. He needed a link to search for the memories Jim needed, and he needed contact for a link, but if he couldn't catch Jim—

They were already connected. This entire world was a psychic manifestation of Jim's own mind. To be in it, Spock had to be already connected. All he needed to do was widen that link a little, flesh it out, make it more of a bond than a touch. Which was, objectively, deeply unethical. Such bonds required years of commitment and thorough understanding from each partner.

Usually, they were not made in life-or-death situations. Spock reasoned that Jim would rather be alive and himself and victorious and bonded than unbonded and a new iteration of the Beldam. So he reached deep, searching for Jim's presence amid the clatter of his useless battle. When the clear sense of him resisted discovery, Spock knelt, touching battered flooring that was nothing more than an imagining of Jim's mind.

It blossomed around him, up through his arm to slide over his skin like a gossamer cloak. Every part of him felt surrounded—every part of him _was_ surround, here in this strange meld. Spock pulled that feeling inside himself, spinning it into a starlight cord that tethered them together out into eternity. At first, the connection drifted limp in the air, present but unfocused. Spock touched it, sending a pulse of his intent to draw it tight between them. He felt Jim notice it, felt his curiosity, felt the way it started to break through the Beldam's rage. A good start.

Not enough.

He strengthened the connection further, forging it into a fledgling bond that he might have to apologize for later. For now, it was needed.

Spock sent his own trust and determination through the bond, feelers to check Jim's mind for readiness. Jim accepted his intrusion with a natural, absentminded skill that gave Spock a moment of pause. Did he welcome Spock because was used to intruders, or because it was _Spock?_

Later.

While Jim and the Beldam puppet fought their way through the rafters of the barn, Spock searched Jim's thoughts for any shade of focus or battle strategy. At first, there was nothing. Then, as he dodged a blow, there. A suggestion of planning, glittering just beyond the Beldam's rage. Spock seized it, catching it in his hold to examine it more closely.

Sulu shone in his grip, a dozen instances in a hundred fights, each with the swordsman showing the kind of unshakable focus that would make Sulu an exemplary helmsperson one day. He often helped keep Jim on task as well; no small accomplishment.

Instead of pulling on strands of Sulu to feed Jim, Spock grabbed as large a metaphorical handful as he could, heaving it at the howling chaotic mess of Jim's thoughts. He felt the moment Sulu's influence superseded the Beldam's. Even if he hadn't been able to feel it, he would have been able to guess. The instant it happened, Jim broke away from the Beldam's puppet, putting almost the whole barn between them. He waited for the creature, awkward with its speed, to round on him, then just—

Cut off its head. Before it could even begin falling to the floor, Jim struck again, using his clawed right hand to rend its middle open. It poured to the ground in heaping piles of sand. The key landed on top of the largest pile.

Jim picked it up. "So," he said, flipping it into the air casually before catching it in a fist. "That's done."

Spock approached him somewhat warily. "Are you well, Jim?"

A muscle clenched in Jim's jaw. "Define well."

" _Jim."_

"I think I'm..." He rubbed a thumb over the key in his hand. "Slipping."

His distress fizzled down their link, drawing Spock to his side. "You are feeling the Beldam's influence more strongly."

Jim blew out a sharp breath, tangling their fingers together in a desperate grip. "She's winning. I— It's never been like this. Before. I couldn't even tell it was her influence. I thought it would get better as we pulled out the anchors, but, Spock, what if it doesn't, what if she—"

Spock pressed their foreheads together, breathing deep and even until Jim matched him. He sent comfort and conviction through the bond. "You have overcome every escalation of her attacks since you were a child. You will overcome this too. I am with you now, Jim; I will not let her have you."

"Yeah about that." Jim's gaze was sharp and curious when it met Spock's. "You gave me Sulu, didn't you? The way you gave me Bones and Pavel. How did you do that when we weren't touching? And why can I still _feel_ you?" He stroked his thumb up the side of Spock's hand. "Hand-holding means something different for you, doesn't it."

Embarrassment flared in Spock, quickly tamped down before Jim could—

"I'm right, aren't I, that's why you're blushing."

"I am not," Spock said, calm and firm. "Vulcans do not blush."

Jim squinted at him. "Then it _feels_ like you're blushing. Why can I feel that?" He swung their joined hands. "Because of this? I couldn't before, though."

"Perhaps we should focus on the task at hand," Spock suggested dryly.

"Evasion." Jim made a pitying sound. "You're not very good at it. So what's the thread?"

"Thread?" Spock echoed, trying to feel the bond as Jim might.

"Yeah, kind of a reddish golden thread." Jim shut his eyes to focus on it. The bond manifested around him—around _them,_ a tangle of gilded light and fire. For a moment, he let himself be filled with wonder and curiosity.

Now was not the time.

Spock bumped his shoulder against Jim's, knocking him out of his concentration. The visible manifestation of their bond vanished. "It is potential," Spock said. "We will have to discuss it later. It will be a _long_ discussion," he insisted before Jim could protest. "At the moment, we lack time for it. Come, Jim we must press on. Where is the next anchor?"

Jim sighed but relinquished. "The attic," he said, tugging Spock after him toward the barn door.

"You're confident," Spock observed.

"There's not really anywhere else it could be. Oh, wait, let's take care of this first." He dropped Spock's hand to grasp the car key he'd torn from the Beldam's creature firmly.

"Wait," Spock said, too slowly, "the barn will—"

Jim snapped the key.

Everything crumbled. Large chunks of not just the barn, but the ground and sky and world broke off in great vanishing chunks, leaving behind a humming world of white static. Spock grabbed Jim around the waist and ran, eyes locked on the side door of the house they'd left not long ago. After a few stumbling steps, Jim found his footing and raced beside him, cursing all the while. They fell through the door just as it slammed shut, sealed against a reality that didn't exist anymore.

"You might have waited until we were inside," Spock observed mildly while picking himself up off the floor.

"Oops," Jim said, sheepishness curling through him. "Yeah, that's my bad. I'll, uh. Not do that. In the future."

He offered Jim a hand up.

"I don't know what the hand thing is," Jim said, accepting his grip, "but I know it's _something._ You'll tell me about it after, right?"

"As soon as this task is accomplished," Spock agreed, "you are safe, and we have a moment of quiet, I shall explain everything."

Jim squeezed his hand, smirking a little at the reaction he could no doubt tell Spock was attempting to subdue. "I'll hold you to that."

"The final anchor?" Spock prompted.

"When I was a kid," Jim said, leading Spock from the kitchen into an adjoining hall, "I used to imagine all the ways this place could be better. One of them was that my dad had all these books in the attic, real books, boxes and boxes of them. I wanted to make a library. Somewhere cozy and safe to read. And the Beldam— Well. She did what she does best, when faced with a dream."

"What in the library do you think will be the anchor?"

"Genuinely no idea," Jim sighed. They approached an old stairwell, stretching up into darkness so complete Spock didn't know how high it went. Jim took the first step.

On Spock's peripheral, something cold reached out. He turned, startled, and saw a solitary door on a long wall, paint peeling and flaking onto the floor. Nothing moved as he watched, but the _sensation_ of movement set his heart racing. The door was stationary even as every instinct trained into him by the greatest psychics on his homeworld told him it was slinking toward them, crushing the distance with slow, inescapable intent. Vulcans were a warrior race who bent themselves toward peace for their own betterment; nothing in their culture or heritage predisposed them to flight.

And yet, facing this door, watching it, _feeling_ it, Spock knew with certainty that they must run or die. He must take Jim with him, drag him out if necessary, escape this maw of—

A different kind of cold touched his other side, not creeping, a rush of menace and fury scored through with black determination. Spock jerked toward it to find Jim looking at the door in the hall beyond them.

"Not yet," he said. To Spock. To the door. To the house or this place or everything. "We have to finish weakening her first. Then we can go into the beetle den."

"The beetle den," Spock echoed breathlessly.

Jim smiled at him: not a friendly expression. "You'll see," he promised, and took another step up into the shadowed stairwell.

Spock followed him, drawing on his strength and focus to find his own center again. Before he was finished ridding himself of the Beldam's brief influence, they reached the top of the stairs. Another door awaited them, smaller, lit by a broken bulb that flickered ominously.

"Into the fray," Jim said, low and humming. He glanced back at Spock. "Last one. You ready?"

No.

"I am," Spock said.

"Liar," his bondmate murmured. He pushed the door open anyway.

The library was breathtaking. Light spilled in through skylights and a solid wall of windows. Dust filtered through sunbeams, giving the room a nostalgic appearance. Bookshelves bisected the floor, raising up nearly to the peak of the roof. Rather than simply staying on the shelves, the books flew around like birds, settling in among the rafters or on the assorted comfortable seats or floating lightly above their heads.

Spock felt awe whisper through him and resented it. This place was a dream, fantasy, a trap set for a small boy. He looked to Jim, reaching for him through their bond at the same time, to gauge his reaction to being here again.

A flavor of resignation laced through with bitterness met his inquiry. Underneath all that, Jim longed for the library, too. For the sanctuary it had been. For the peace he'd found here and nowhere else in his life.

For the man who organized the books.

Far above their heads, perched on the tall stacks, that man whistled. Jim looked away with a deliberate grit of his teeth, but Spock's attention snapped up in automatic reaction. The man was handsome, blond hair and blue eyes in an aesthetically pleasing face. He looked to be roughly their age and smiled down at Jim with a beatific expression usually reserved for iconography imagery. In Spock's mind, Jim hummed with desperation and regret and a deep, bitter longing.

"It's good to see you again," the man said. His voice stayed low and soothing and still managed to reach them from his spot so high above them.

"Who is he?" Spock asked Jim.

"I used to wonder," Jim said, muscle jumping in his jaw, "if she could only make the people and places _I_ knew, or if she could take things from anyone in the house. That guy up there, is he what I wish he'd been? Or is he a puppet made of who my mother and brother remember?"

"Jim," Spock said, sympathy making his heart wrench in his side. "Is he—"

"George Kirk," he confirmed with a short, sharp nod. "My father. Yeah."

The cruelty of giving Jim his father only in a trap seemed almost too much, even for the Beldam. But then what better bait for her web? What sweeter gift could she have offered?

"Can you do this?" Spock asked, earnest even as he flooded the bond with as much sympathy and comfort as he could. "I will handle the final anchor if you need—"

"How?" Jim replied, smile bright and dangerous as a knife. "Of the two of us, I'm the only one with weapons."

"It is your mindscape," Spock argued. "If you _imagine_ a weapon for me, I could—"

"No." Jim took a deep breath. "I fell for it the first time, you know? I bought every inch of this place, all three wonders, the Beldam pitch at the end, all of it. She only missed out on my other eye because Kit attacked her, and then she went after Kit, and I couldn't let her so— No. I have to do this myself. I have to break the things she used to break me." He looked at Spock, direct, demanding. "Do you understand?"

Spock took a step back. "Not fully," he admitted, "but enough of it. I will do as you say."

"Thank you." Jim tipped his head to look up at the floating books and the sack monster sitting above them. "I have no idea what the anchor is," he admitted. "But I'd rather not look for it with Peanut Gallery George up there judging us. So I say we murder him first, get that out of the way, then figure out which of these books or light bulbs or whatever is the one we need to break."

"Doubtlessly I should be concerned by the propensity for violence on display," Spock said, already scanning the room for a clear path to the puppet. "However, in this case, I believe I can make an exception."

Jim stabbed a finger in his direction. "Truth. Now let's get up there."

They tried. Jim climbed the bookshelves and was knocked down by fluttering books. He looked for something to use as a rope or a ladder and found nothing. He tried imagining a way up but could produce only weapons made of the Beldam's darkness. He then attempted to hurl the weapons at the ever-watching sack monster, again to no success.

"Is that the best you can do?" the creature asked, sounding amused. Its voice echoed at them from every corner of the attic, as though the room itself found their efforts laughable.

Jim's frustration surged, not just through their bond but visibly. Ire bubbled off his skin in viscous black dregs.

Spock tightened his hold, dragging Sulu's focus back to the fore again. "Please, Jim, do not give into her. Resist. We will defeat this creature and her and be free of this place. But you _must_ resist."

"I can't— I can't think." Jim gasped a breath, shoulders heaving as they curled forward. "There's so much, she's just _so angry,_ and I—" His voice lowered to an unnatural growl. " _And I am too_."

The Beldam was using him, his emotions, twisting them against him as she has when he was a child. This wasn't a battle to be strategized; Sulu couldn't help. But then who could? Which of them could show Jim how he was being manipulated? Which of them understood human emotions enough to—

Oh.

Of course: Uhura.

But Jim did not know her, not as well or long as Spock did. So Spock dug inward first, drawing forward the thread of Uhura's cool understanding, her intuition and insight, usually directed toward others but with no fear of turning it inward. Once he had her essence coiled bright in his mind, he bundled it down their bond, adding it to the pool of deep respect and curiosity Jim already had regarding her.

Almost immediately, the black sludge dripping from Jim's struggling form to the floor vanished. His breathed evened out; his head cocked thoughtfully. Understanding filled him like a cool breeze, and he straightened at last.

"Huh," he said in summary, his own thoughts glowing in the room like a star. "Oh, I— Oh. That's— Frankly," he said, turning to Spock, "I'm annoyed at myself for falling into a _dumb, emotionally dense manchild_ stereotype."

"In your defense," Spock replied mildly, "you are in the middle of something very like a possession."

Jim made a dismissive sound, surveying the room with fresh, clear eyes. "If it were possession, it'd be easy to fix," he mused, squinting up at the Beldam creature. "Sadie could have whipped up an exorcism ages ago. This is more like...the way minerals replace organic matter to create fossils. Same shape, different thing entirely. It's okay, though, we'll excavate me in time to save most of my fleshy bits."

"Even for you," Spock said, sending his amusement down their bond, "that is...quite a metaphor."

"Eh." Jim rolled his shoulders as though preparing for physical exertion. "I can feel her picking at Uhura's understanding. I'll end up lost in my own anger again, tricked by her, sooner rather than later. Before that happens, I need your help." He turned to Spock, determination fierce in his eyes. "Who can you give me who will get me up to that bastard up there?"

The answer to that even simpler than the previous: Who other than Montgomery Scott?

Spock dug for memories of Scott, fleeting and fantastic, his flash of genius that so well-matched Jim's. More, he drew on _Jim's_ memories, seeking Jim's admiration for Scott's unusual way of approaching problems, threading the resulting combination of insight and inspiration through the problem of how to reach the Beldam creature.

"Oh," Jim said, head tilted back, a wicked blend of surprise and delight twining down their bond. "Ha, yes, that's perfect. Don't freak out," he added to Spock. "I'm giving it all I've got."

Alarm flared along Spock's skin. "Jim, what does that—"

Jim was already gone. He threw his arms forward and up in a motion like he was snapping a whip. In the downward arc, ropes of darkness curved into being, already undulating with the force of Jim's movement. The whips wrapped around fluttering books, two or three each, sending the entire flock into frantic flight. They were stronger than they looked: the book yanked Jim off the ground, propelling him toward the top of the bookshelves.

When he reached the height of the books' ability to lift him, the whips dissolved. Jim fell at an angle, toward the shelves. At the last moment, he covered his hands and feet in shadow claws, slamming them into the woods and stationary books to slow his descent to a stop. He scaled the bookshelves in a manner more like a cat than a person, leaping lightly from hold to hold, sending waves of knickknacks and damaged books toppling to the floor. Spock suspected he was displacing most of the objects due to spite rather than necessity: Sometimes he had to reach out of his way with a hand or foot to get all of the items in his range, which he did without fail.

The Beldam creature did not react to Jim's advance, at first. Slowly, as Jim got higher, switching between captured books and scaling the shelves as necessary, it began to lean forward. Light glinted off its button eyes, blue as none of the others had been, unmoving and tracking Jim's progress at the same time. It loomed further and further over the edge of its perch, until Spock could not understand how it prevented itself from falling. Nothing else about it changed; it did not grip the edge of the shelf, did not curl its legs to anchor its leaning torso. It just...bent forward, its whole body bent forward on an axis that should have been impossible. Even its expression stayed perfectly the same, fond and beautiful around the blue buttons.

Beneath Uhura's understanding and Scott's ingenuity, the Beldam's rage began to grow once more. Spock couldn't see Jim's face, but he could _feel_ the way his lip began to curl. Instead of smooth, quick motions, his ascent became jagged, uncontrolled, causing him to slip and fumble when before he'd demonstrated grace even Kit would have praised.

Spock fought to reinforce Uhura's and Scott's memories. He tried to bring in as many of the others as he could, too, patience and healing and everything else, layered together to protect Jim from the Beldam's influence, even one moment longer.

When Jim was only a few feet from the top of the shelves, the Beldam creature finally stood. It did not retreat back onto the shelves. Instead, it lifted impossibly into thin air, straightening until all its limbs dangled limply like a marionette's, lovely smile vacant in a listlessly tilted head. It flew back into the unseen space at the top of the bookshelves as though yanked by an unseen hand.

Jim growled and followed it, without thought or hesitation. Then they were both gone, and Spock had to watch from his fixed point on the ground, surrounded by ruined books and broken trinkets and the surge of malice suffusing their bond. For the most part, Jim's battle against his father's puppet was silent. There was occasionally the soft sound of scuffling feet or the tearing of cloth, the spilling of sand.

Spock clung to his people's teachings in an effort to be calm, to be a source of serenity against the sea of Jim's rage. He ran through standing meditations and centering techniques and the higher-level psychic exercises designed to temper overly powerful, unruly minds. He couldn't tell if it helped Jim, but it certainly allowed him to get his own budding panic under control.

Jim would be fine. He would either finish his battle and settle back into suppressing the Beldam's poison, or they would work together to push it back, or Spock would fight the Beldam himself for Jim's freedom. Somehow.

And then Jim landed beside him, hardly making a sound. Spock did not physically jump, but he recognized the roll of surprise he sent down their bond.

For a moment, Jim grinned, mischievous and pleased, looking more himself than he had since perhaps their childhood. Then he straightened fully, rolling his shoulders back, stretching his neck with a satisfied sound. "Got him," he said unnecessarily.

"I see," Spock replied, equally extraneous. He tucked his hands at the small of his back to keep himself from pulling Jim close for a physical inspection of his well-being. They were in Jim's mind-scape; any wounds he received here could not be corrected with first aid. "Now shall we turn our attention toward locating the anchor?"

"Got that too," Jim said, more proudly this time. He held out his right hand, curled tight in a fist. He spread it flat to reveal two blue buttons, one with some thread still hanging from it. "Everyone always said I had my father's eyes." He grinned, sharp and dangerous as a blade. "Guess I proved them right."

Spock peered at the buttons. "Which is the anchor?" he asked.

Jim shrugged. "Don't care. I'm gonna crush them both.

"In your bare hands?" Spock asked, one eyebrow lifted in a show of skepticism. "Or will you manifest yet more claws?"

"Eh." Jim waved his free hand dismissively. "It's my mind. I can be strong enough to crush buttons if I wanna be."

Spock touched the tips of his fingers to those of Jim's right hand, carefully directing his thought away from the deeper meaning. "Be sure to wait this time," he said, dry as a Vulcan desert, until we are no longer in the place that will vanish once the anchor is destroyed."

"Point," Jim agreed. He shoved the buttons in his pocket and gestured toward the door. "Ready?"

"More than." Spock took Jim's left hand in his own, giving it a gentle squeeze when Jim's surprise and happiness curled down the bond.

Jim tugged him close unexpectedly, using Spock's momentary unbalance to press their foreheads together. "Don't think I missed whatever that finger thing was," he murmured, eyes bright with mischief.

"We will discuss it later," Spock said, more promise than dismissal as he struggled to keep the blush he could feel on his cheeks and the tips of his ears from growing.

"Mmm," the Terran agreed. He brushed the tip of his nose over Spock's before pulling away to stride purposefully toward the door. "Better get this over with, then."

At the bottom of the stairs, Jim paused to pull the buttons out of his pocket again. He kept one tucked in his palm and pinched the other between both forefingers and thumbs at opposite edges to snap it down the middle. Once it was broken, he discarded the pieces to repeat his destruction on the second.

The door to the stairs slammed shut. It shuttered and rattled alarmingly, not just the door but the frame in the wall as well, like it was a painting tacked to the drywall. After a moment, it froze in place, cockeyed, before turning gray and crumbling in ash. The last remnants of it drew inward as though sucked into a black hole, and it was gone. All that remained was a smooth wall covered in peeling, faded wallpaper.

"So." Jim grinned at him while rubbing his hands together. The buttons had crumbled too; the halves in his hands had turned into clinging dust. "Good call, making me wait to break those until we got clear of the attic. I don't know where things go when they leave here, since it's technically my mind and everything, and frankly I'm not all that interested in finding out. So yeah." He gave Spock a thumb's up. "Thanks for standing between me and an idiotic death. Again."

"It happens with such frequency," Spock said, straightening first his shirt and then Jim's, "one might almost think there was a career in it."

"Ha!" Jim nudged their shoulders together and twisted his fingers with Spock's. "If Starfleet throws us out but _doesn't_ lock us all up, I'm sure I could find a way to make saving me a full-time gig."

"I look forward to it," Spock said, as dry as he was serious. He sent a curl of his affection down the bond. "Are you ready?"

Jim filled his lungs in a deep, sharp attempt to pretend he could bolster his courage with air. "No," he said firmly. He squeezed Spock's hand. "But we don't really have a choice. The web is unwinding."

"Can you feel it?" Spock asked, peering in to Jim's eyes to try and read the effect such an event would have on him. He could sense nothing of it through the bond. Perhaps he might have been able to with a full marriage bond, but the fledgling thread singing between them at present could tell him only about Jim's emotional state. "Will you be all right?"

"I can kind of feel it," Jim said, rolling his shoulders to shift the sense of...whatever it was the Beldam was doing. "I won't be all right until we get her out of my head."

"Do you have a plan for how to do that?"

Jim made a vague gesture. "Not...not really? I figured we'd wing it again, like with the others."

"Do you think that wise?" Spock asked, as evenly as he could. "I have no weapons to use against her, and your greatest asset here is the power she gave you. I do not mean to frighten or unsettle you, Jim; I also do not wish to be taken off guard by her and defeated here at the end. Tell me truthfully: How did you and Kit kill her in your youth? I know you did not strangle her," he said when Jim opened his mouth with lies itching down the bond. He lifted their joined hands. "It will be very difficult for you to, as you might say, _pull one over on me_ while we are here and joined."

For a long moment, Jim visible struggled between taking offense and making a lewd joke. He deflated with a sigh. "Okay," he said, turning to lean against the rapidly aging wall. "Okay, so—no. I didn't strangle her. I—" Jim shook his head, looking strangely bewildered. "It's hard to remember what we did, exactly. I know we took her apart, after she was dead. After we killed her. She looked like my mother—my real mother, the one who didn't want me—right down to freckles and scars, except for the buttons. But the longer I stayed, the more sure it was that I wouldn't leave, the more...comfortable she got, the less effort she put into pretending. She got...long, and tall, and thin. Whatever she really is, it looks a lot like...like a spider's body with a human torso. But her legs and arms and fingers, they aren't—right. They're—" He shrugged helplessly "I don't know how to describe it. She's like a spider made of sewing needles. All the eyes and tips welded together like mechanical parts. So once she was dead, we disassembled her, so she couldn't pull herself together and come for us. Even while the world she built was collapsing, long after I should haves stopped, I kept at it. Kit's the only reason I went through the door at the end, and even then—" He brushed his fingers over the button in his left eye. "I wouldn't have made it through without Sadie. She bound the button so I could pull it out of her world. The big trap."

"How did you kill her, Jim?" Spock asked, low and gentle, passing all the acceptance and love he could through their small, glowing bond.

"She went after Kit," Jim said insistently. "Do you understand? I could give myself to her but she couldn't _have_ Kit. I saved her from Frank, took beatings I didn't have to so he wouldn't find her. And she stayed when she should have left. She was the best thing in my whole world. When the Beldam went after her, called her _vermin,_ I—" He swallowed hard. "I already had the button by then. It was new, and I could feel how much power was in it, _her_ power, reaching for the life in me, to eat up what I was so she could keep going. I just...I was so angry, I pulled back. Started unwinding her _first."_ He shook his head on a bitter laugh. "She sure wasn't expecting that. It distracted her enough so Kit could get loose. I honestly don't know how I killed her," he said with anther shrug. "I kind of blacked out or something. Kit never told me how long it took, or what exactly happened, but I came to holding a trophy like a bludgeon, both hands bloody with this awful black gore." He blew a long stream of air through pursed lips. "Don't know how that's gonna help us right now though."

Spock didn't know either. Would the Beldam be corporeal enough for a physical attack? If so, would she lower her guard enough for Jim to dismember her a second time? "We will think of something," Spock said.

"When?" Jim tipped his head back to indicate the wallpaper falling apart behind him. "This whole place is dying. Soon we won't have a choice other than to go in the beetle den. Winging it might be our only option."

"It is not my preference," Spock said.

"That's because you're smart." Jim gave him half a crooked smile. "However this ends, I want you to know—"

"Don't," Spock snapped.

"Other than Kit," the Terran pressed on stubbornly, "you are the best person I ever met. My life would have been so empty without you, Spock of Vulcan." His smile warmed. "Even in the years without you, you were my guiding star. I hope we survive this, so we can figure out what happens after. But if not, if this is it—"

"Jim," Spock begged.

"I want you to know it was worth it. This place, the Beldam, the button, all of it was worth it, just because it brought me Kit. It brought me the Doyles, and the Henderson, and Bones and Hikaru and Pavel and Scotty and Uhura. It brought me you. I wouldn't change a thing." He leaned forward to press a brief, sweet kiss against Spock's mouth. "It has been a pleasure, Spock. Right from the start."

Before Spock could form a response, Jim pushed away from the wall. He dropped Spock's hand, spun on his heel, grabbed both handles of the double doors standing between them and the Beldam, and threw open the beetle den.

The room was dark, not in the way a room was without any lights turned on, but in the way it felt when one came indoors after being outside in full sunlight. He felt momentarily blind as his eyes strained to make out details of the space around him. The general shape of the room resolved first, small for a Terran sitting room, smaller certainly than the Doyles' or Hendersons'. Wallpaper with an indistinct pattern peeled from the corners downward. There were two armchairs and a low table arranged around a fireplace burning low, basically down to embers.

Spock shut his eyes to give them time to adjust better, then nearly shook his head at himself: They were not in a dim room. They were in a dim corner of Jim's mind. Spock reached out with a psychic touch and stoked the fire, as it were.

In the fireplace of Jim's mind, flames leapt high, not orange but _green,_ unnatural fire that cast wicked shadows across the room. Spock finally understood why Jim called it "the beetle den", anyway: Unlike the false normality of the rest of the house, this room was done in an insect motif. The table and chairs were in the shape of different impossibly-colored, fat bugs. The wallpaper was bright purple covered in dark stag beetles. Even the hardwood floors were laid down in a pattern like a spider's web.

The only thing missing was the Beldam.

"Jim," Spock murmured, half-turning to face him, "where do you think the—"

Jim hung in the air behind him, limp as any of the other puppets had been. His head lolled back and to one side, toes four or so inches above the floor, expression smooth and blank as a doll's. Thin black tendrils spread out from his button eye like a web across his face. A shadow stretched out behind him, long and still despite the flickering fire. It crept up the wall and stretched to form spindly arms and a half dozen unnatural spider legs. The body of the shadow was nothing like Jim's, all sharp angles and fine points.

The Beldam.

It twisted and stretched in Jim's shadow, head tipped back, mouth open in a sharp-toothed, silent scream. Spock lunged forward, intending to grab Jim's shoulders and shake him out of...whatever trance this was.

His hand burned where it touched the Terran, not hot like a fire but bubbling like acid. He pulled back with a hiss, cradling the visibly unharmed but aching hand close to his chest. "Jim," he called, broken. He cleared his throat. "Jim! You must wake up!"

Jim did not wake up. The Beldam wrenched her arms up, and Jim's moved too. Slowly, a manic, evil grin split Jim's face.

Spock's heart raced in his side. The fire flared up and out of its hearth, spreading like an oil spill up the wall, throwing the Beldam deeper across the room. She laughed, not in a way Spock could hear but one he could _feel_ in his bones, chill and aching.

Jim did not wake up. He lurched forward through the air when the Beldam shadow began walking in place.

Jim would kill him. He would consume Spock under the Beldam's power and be lost, he would never wake in the Doyles' apartment, would never triumph over the curse of his childhood. They would not face Starfleet and their future together, whatever shape that took. Jim would be lost.

They all would.

Spock searched frantically for a solution. He reached out through their bond to try and jostle Jim's consciousness awake, hoping he could fight the Beldam as no one else would be able to. All he felt where Jim should be was an empty, gaping maw, screaming and hungry. He tried to kindle the memories and support of Jim's friends like he had when facing the wonders but nothing was there for him to latch onto or stoke into greater awareness. He pulled up his own thoughts and feelings of the crew and fed them to the emptiness but they just—

They slid off.

"Jim," Spock begged. "How can I help you? What can I do to—"

An idea blossomed, whole and foolhardy and desperate. The Beldam's hold on Jim was old and deeply anchored. Spock would need to supersede her claim with a something even older and deeper. Nothing in Jim's life existed before the Beldam; nothing of use, anyway. But Spock had already begun to form a link with Jim that reached back through eons uncounted, a bond of minds and hearts and souls, one that lived in his blood ever waiting to be shared.

So he shared it.

Spock rent himself open, flaying his katra to offer the pieces of it to Jim. The child he'd known and lost; the adult he'd sought and found. All the parts of Jim that made him dear and singular and _t'hy'la,_ beyond the Beldam taint, just _Jim,_ pure and sweet. He offered himself to Jim, all wrapped up in his memories of the man himself, giving Jim a link to himself, bound at the core to Spock, beyond any hope of sharing with another. The Beldam screamed.

And Jim woke up.

He gasped in a breath, spine bowing back as his head snapped up and his eye opened. Behind him, the Beldam shadow skittered and twinned. The second image twisted until it was Jim again. For a moment, all was still. Then Jim dropped back to the ground, catching himself in a crouch with one hand touching the floor, face alive with a vicious snarl. He didn't move, but his shadow did, launching itself at its enemy in a long, furious streak. The room began to shudder.

Spock rushed forward to cover Jim's body with his own when the first pieces of ceiling collapsed. He put a hand to Jim's face, pressing it into his own throat as the black spider webbing pulled back in toward the button. The Beldam screamed again, that voiceless feeling that rattled Spock's bones. He glanced back at the wall to see how the battle was coming along.

Only Jim's shadow remained.

The fire went out. The walls turned grey and began to flake.

Jim put his hand over Spock's. He curled his free arm around Spock's waist. "Spock," he said, low and intense.

"I am here," Spock said immediately.

"I just need to know..."

"Anything," Spock promised.

Jim pulled back just enough to look at him. His one blue eye was sparkling with mischief as he ran his fingers over Spock's. "Did we just get Vulcan married?"

Spock felt his cheeks and ears and even his throat warm with a blush. Jim leaned forward to press their mouths together. The last remnants of the Beldam's web collapsed and for just a moment, they were together in Jim's mind, touching and touched, bound in the only way that mattered to Vulcans.

 _Yes,_ his very self replied, embarrassed but not ashamed, not regretful.

 _Good,_ Jim replied from all around him, satisfied and smug. _Let's go tell the others. Have a party or something before Starfleet locks up._

 _Starfleet might not—_

 _Nice optimism! Let's find out._

 _I love you, t'hy'la,_ Spock whispered.

 _Taluhk nash-veh k'dular,_ Jim said, taking the words from Spock with a skill greater than many of Spock's Vulcan teachers. _Now enough dawdling: time to face the music._

Spock's own reluctance to leave the meld was impossible to hide. Still, he let Jim draw them together and up, toward the outside world.

 _We'll come back,_ Jim thought.

 _Oh yes,_ Spock agreed, sending a depth of promise and intent that made even Jim stumble. _Of that I am certain._

…

They woke on the hardwood floor of the Doyles' apartment, surrounded by runes and still-burning candles, as wrapped up together in the physical world as they had been in Jim's mind.

Somewhere beyond them, someone popped the cork of a champagne bottle.

"Warmest congratulations on your marriage, Jim darling," said Sadie Doyle fondly with an enormous glass of bubbling alcohol in each hand.

"And here's to many more," Frank Doyle added, pouring most of a new bottle into equally large glasses.

"Frank," Sadie scolded with a laugh. They clinked their glasses and drank, one after the other, until all four were empty, then moved into the kitchen to make more.

"What," said Bones.

Jim tipped his forehead against Spock's and started laughing.

"Did she say _married?"_ Bones demanded. He paced along the edge of the circle but didn't break through.

"It's about time," Kit said from where she walked just in the doctor's shadow. "The Hendersons went home for a brief and unspecified emergency related to some vampire thing, but they'll be back when they can."

Hikaru made an impatient sound. "Forget that," he said, scrubbing a few of the runes away so he could rush to their side. Once the circle was broken, the candles spontaneously, simultaneously went out. Jim felt Spock's curiosity raise its formidable head.

Kit reached them first: She eeled her way between Jim and Spock to curl up and purr in the almost nonexistent space between their chests. "Congratulations," she said, soft and warm, layered in meaning as she butted her head up into Jim's chin.

He grinned, rubbing his cheek against hers. "Thanks. You started all of this; I'm glad you're here at the end, too."

Hikaru ignored their quiet moment, pushing at Jim's shoulder until they were eye to eye. "What happened?" he demanded.

"What do you mean?" Jim asked, brow furrowed in concern. "Like, in general? Or do you have a specific moment in mind?"

"In summary," Kit said, "they beat the Beldam."

"Not that. I felt you..." Hikaru seemed to struggle for the right word. He touched his fingers to the center of his chest before drawing the away in a jerking motion. "Kind of tugging me."

"Oh!" Pavel lifted his head out of the pile of blankets in the corner he was burrowed in to escape the stay beams of sunlight spilling in around the Doyles' thick curtains. "I thought I must have imagined it. Did we feel the same thing?"

"I think I did too," Uhura said, putting down the hand of cards she was playing with Scotty. He and a scowling Bones echoed her.

"So what was that?" Hikaru asked. "How did you do it?"

"Did it help?" Pavel added.

"Wait," Kit protested, one ear ticking back. "How come I didn't get tugged?"

"I—" Jim looked at Spock, then back around at the others. "It's—" Kit butted his chin again.

"You offered," Spock said, turning to Pavel. "You said if Jim had need of you, to draw on you for strength, that you would be his reserve."

Pavel's expression opened with surprise. "You were able to?"

"Sort of," Jim agreed.

"And you didn't pull on me?" Kit complained, turning her friendly rub into a warning nip.

"Sorry." Jim stroked a hand down her back. "You're too close for it, I think. I needed them for new, external stuff. You're basically bedrock."

Kit bit him again, just to be contrary.

Bones chose that moment to shove a tricorder in Jim's face. "Explain."

"Spock kind of—" He made as descriptive gesture as he could. "Gave me you. All of you. Or, well, each of you in turn. When I needed help."

"You are a master of words," Uhura teased, chin cradled in her palm.

"Chekov spent some time catching us up," Scotty said. "Sounds like a hard fight."

"It was, uh." Jim stack his hands together. "Layered. Which is why I needed each of you one at a time, instead of all at once."

Hikaru twisted an impatient hand in the air. "No, go back. That doesn't make sense. What?"

"I'm sure this is all very interesting," Frank said from the kitchen where he was pouring a few mostly-gin martinis. "But I don't care, and you've been here an awfully long time now. Perhaps you'd like to leave and let my wife and I get back to what really matters: drinking all these terribly important drinks."

"Now Frank," Sadie said, taking and consuming one of the martinis in the space between words. "Jim has been as close as family to us for most of his young life! Surely we can extend him the courtesy of giving him time to explain to his friends and new space husband how he used the power of love and the latent psychic abilities of not just himself but also the aforementioned space husband to defeat the looming monster of his childhood by replacing her cursed web with one of their own design, built by weaving the strands of their mutual devotion into something that will bind the six of them together through all their lives and perhaps even beyond." She clinked a new glass against Frank's. "It shouldn't take long at all. There's only four of them to catch up, since Jim and Spock where there and Kit knows everything anyway, as any good cat would."

Everyone stared at her.

Someone knocked on the door.

"Now see here!" Frank called toward the hall. "We are not at home!"

"Delivery," the person on the other side shouted back. "I have a summons for Jim Kirk and the unauthorized crew of the unauthorized _Narada_ mission _._ From Starfleet Command."

"Oh shit," Hikaru said, almost surprised. "I forgot all about that."

"We only got back from space a few hours ago," Bones said with eyes narrowed suspiciously. "How could you forget?"

Hikaru motioned at Spock and Jim, the apartment, the Doyles. "We have been a little busy."

"I think," Pavel said, inching toward the window with his mount of blankets, "that if I had protection from the sun, I could carry everyone outside through—"

"I'm sorry, darling," Sadie interrupted. "We simply do not allow that window to be opened."

"That's how the bees get in," Frank agreed.

After a pause, Scotty raised one finger and opened his mouth.

The Starfleet courier knocked again, somehow managing to make the sound stubborn. "I am going to deliver this summons whether you want me to or not."

"We choose not!" Frank said.

"I just I'd deliver it anyway! Now open the door and embrace your paperwork-intensive fate!"

Frank turned to his wife. "Say, Sade, do we _know_ a Starfleet Command?"

"Well, I don't know, darling, I can't seem to recall. Perhaps we met them at an auction."

"Ha!" Frank threw his drink back around his laugh. "Unlikely. I remember everyone I meet at auction, as you know."

"I do _not_ know," Sadie said, swirling her own drink around in her glass. "In fact, I think it's often quite the opposite. Do you remember the time when Secular Charlie— "

"Hey!" The courier banged on the door. "Let me in to deliver this already, this isn't my only stop."

"Oh my god," Kit groaned. "Somebody just get it already before I do."

Pavel zipped across the suite in less than the blink of an eye to open the door with a guarded expression. "…Yes?"

The courier frowned at him. "There's no need to be rude about this, you know," they said, shoving an old-fashioned paper clipboard at him. "Sign please."

"But I— "

" _Sign."_

He signed.

The courier handed over a single plain white envelope with a cheery "Have a good day!" and vanished back down the hall.

"You know," Pavel said, closing the door thoughtfully, "I cannot put my finger on it. But something about that delivery person was a little strange."

"Focus." Kit pawed at his ankle. "What's the letter?"

Pavel tore it open. "It is vague," he said grimly as he scanned the contents. "We are required to attend a meeting tomorrow at the Academy." He looked up at the others. "There is a time and location. We are instructed to bring only ourselves and tell no one."

"This is going to go one of two very different ways," Jim said. He finally got up, lending a hand down to Spock. When the Vulcan took it, Uhura wolf whistled. "Soon," he told Spock firmly. "We're having that conversation _soon."_

 _"_ After the meeting," Spock agreed. He tangled their hands together then pulled away, crossing his arms behind his back with green tinting his ears. "Either in holding for our trial and/or imprisonment, or on the way to whatever suicide mission they assign us to in order to take advantage of our obvious skills and also, as you might say, 'disappear' us."

"Pessimist," Jim teased. "Maybe they want to thank us. Stranger things have happened!"

Most of his renegade crew heaved a chorus of heavy sighs. "Thanks for jinxing us," Kit added. She leapt up his back to settle on his shoulder. "Now we're gonna get fed to some monster that'll eat us in unspeakably horrible ways."

Jim frowned, then startled, then laughed in a burst of mirth that seemed to surprise him. "Been there," he realized, "did that! First time surviving's the hardest, I'm sure."

"You're think we're distracted." Bones strode across the room to snatch the letter out of Pavel's hands. "But we're _not."_ He read through the summons. "Christ," he grumbled, then glared at Pavel. "Did you look at the time on this? We'd have to leave pretty much immediately to get there on time! Do you even have your parasol? Are you planning to just walk into an important meeting covered in _blankets_?"

Pavel sulked deeper into his pile. "I will be fine," he said.

"We'll figure it out," Hikaru promised.

"It'll be a fine challenge to pass the time," Scotty agreed as he and Uhura started picking up their card game.

Jim looked around at the candles and chalk circle and assorted runes. "Uh." He scratched the top of Kit's head and glanced up at the Doyles. "Do you have a broom, or...?"

Sadie and Frank looked at each other in apparent confusion. "Broom?" Sadie asked.

"Why in the dickens would we have one of those?" Frank added.

"Whatever they are," Sadie said pleasantly, clinking her glass to Frank's before they knocked both back.

"How do you still have functioning livers?" Bones demanded.

"Assumptions," Jim and Pavel chorused.

"Can we _focus,"_ Bones snapped.

Someone threw the front door open. "We're back!" Donna announced. She twisted her parasol to get through the doorway but otherwise kept it up and unfurled. "How is he doing? Is it going well? Has there been any movement?"

"It seems as though he might have succeeded in his task," Dave said, coming in behind her and swinging the door closed. "Given that he is standing before us with Kit once more upon his shoulder."

"My baby!" Donna rushed forward to pull Jim into a crushing hug. "Free at last! You look brighter and lighter and more handsome than ever." She cupped his face between her hands. "Tell me all about it, Jim dear. Did you slit her throat? Or tear her limb from limb? I hope it was appropriately violent and painful!"

"Perhaps with a good bite thrown in at the end," Dave agreed, wrapping one arm around Jim and one around Donna. "From your old man."

Jim laughed, gripping each of them tight in turn. "Yeah," he said, not caring how tight his voice sounded. "That's pretty much how it went."

"Well I want to hear all about it," Donna said, looking around for a place to sit down.

"Um," Pavel said, taking the letter back from Bones to offer it to Donna. "Perhaps that will have to wait a day. Or two."

"Whyever would we wait?" Donna asked, tone pitched in the extra sweet way that meant she was ready to murder. She took the letter and read it over, then wrinkled her nose. "Oh, bah. _Work meetings._ They're just an endless chore, aren't they?" She passed the letter to Hikaru and dug in her somewhat enormous handbag. "If you must go, I'm sure you'll need this, Pavel dear." She produced his parasol, the one he'd left in the Doyles' magical expanding town car.

"Thank you," he said, taking it with a blink of surprise.

"And if they try to arrest you and throw you in prison for being a go-getter where all this world-destroying nonsense is concerned," she said. "Do let us know, all right? Dave and I will come get you on the next full moon."

"It would be a pleasure and an honor to feast upon those who would hurt you," Dave said, "while in my werewolf form."

"Cool," Jim said, hands planted on his hips, grin large across his face. "That's the exit strategy taken care of before we even get there."

Pavel deployed his parasol. "The entrance strategy too!" He turned a grateful smile, bordering on worshipful, to Donna. "Thank you for this."

"Don't even mention it, Pavel." Donna reached out to pat his head. "You're my only grand-sired, after all."

"This is really sweet," Bones began, "but we—"

"Isn't it though?" Sadie said, doing a circuit of the room to press a glass of champagne into each person's hand. "So before you all go off...being imprisoned, or whatever it is young people do these days, let's have a toast!"

"A toast!" Frank shouted from the kitchen. He hurried to join them, a martini glass in hand. "Oh," he said once he saw the champagne. "My drink is improperly dressed for the occasion."

"Shall I help you?" Sadie offered.

"Too late!" Frank tossed his empty glass back toward the kitchen, then held out a hand for one of Sadie's champagne flutes. "Now, to what are we toasting?" He wound his free arm around Sadie's waste. "Your devastatingly good looks?"

"No," she said, drawing the word out thoughtfully.

" _My_ devastatingly good looks?"

"They are quite dashing," Sadie agreed, "but no."

"Did we open a new bottle of Scotch?"

"Not since this morning."

"Is it my birthday?"

"No, Frankenstein, not for months."

"Is it _your_ birthday?"

"A toast," Hikaru interrupted, lifting his glass. "To Jim and Spock: For beating the Beldam!"

"Is that what this was!"

"Not just to us," Jim protested. "It was everyone. I couldn't have done this if we hadn't been together."

They lifted their glasses in a brief moment of victory. Once the last drop of alcohol was consumed (and Frank and Sadie had wandered off to find more gin), Bones and Spock joined forced to get the crew organized and back in their aggressively borrowed ship. It took an hour to get back to San Francisco, another forty-five minutes to ensure everyone was in their dress reds and looking as smart as possible before heading out as a team to face their doom.

The meeting location was a room in a building in a part of campus Jim had never been to. Which struck him as odd, as he'd previously thought the campus thoroughly explored.

"Have you ever?" he asked Pavel.

"Never," Pavel said, eyes wide in the shadow of his parasol.

The thing that set him on edge, that got under his skin and raised all the hairs on his body and painted sweat along the back of his neck and his hairline, is: It was a beautiful building. Gothic. Dark lines and sweeping arcs, spiked turrets and what even looked like gargoyles tucked in the shadows. The building was _gorgeous._ It looked ancient, too. Age radiated from it like an almost physical force, like it had been standing on the west corner of the Academy since before Starfleet or the Federation or even routine space flight. Jim began to reach down, to pull up the Beldam's power and examine the structure from behind her Other veil. Then he remembered—

She was gone.

Not forever. She was a being spawned from shadow and hunger, she could never be destroyed forever. But her hooks in him were gone, her right to his life erased. He still had the button, but the connection between them was severed.

Did he even have any Other power left?

Spock tangled their hands together. When Jim glanced at him, Spock inclined his head without turning to face him, sending a sensation of support and encouragement.

So Jim shut his eyes and reached deep, down where the Beldam had once lived. He'd been right: she was gone.

He'd been wrong: the shadows and hunger remained, a pool of it that felt familiar but...free. This power was _his_ now, cut off from her and left behind. A piece of Jim as sure as his button. He teased a thread of it out, wrapping it around his sight before opening his eyes,

The building _glowed._

"So I'm not sure what this means," he told his crew as he let the shadow-vision slip from him, "but this whole building is Other."

Bones threw his hands in the air. "Because of _course_ it is."

"Is that better for us," Uhura asked, "or worse?"

"Could go either way," Hikaru said with a shrug. "Depends on if we derailed Important Plans by sending that monkey's paw away or Set Things Right.. We might as well flip a coin."

"Or just go in," Scott suggested. "Face firing squad. Get it over with."

Jim looked at Spock, whose belief even now warmed the air around them, solid as the ground beneath their feet. He looked at the others, a line of determination and loyalty behind him. Whatever end waited for them, they would face it together.

"Okay," he said, squaring his shoulders. "Let them do their worst. I'm ready."

…

He was _not_ ready.

"We want to offer you a commendation."

Jim blinked, feeling the world kind of tilt around him. "...Pardon?"

They were gathered in a dark, dark room down a dark, dark hall, as spooky in real life as it had been in uncountable ghost stories told when he was little. Spock stood by him, tucked close behind his right shoulder. At first, when it was them in a deeply unsubtle circle of light, they others had formed a solid semi-circle of support at parade rest. Then the judges' bench before them lit up like a firework, revealing three figures, women, old but not ancient, waiting for them. The judges didn't _look_ like anything other than Starfleet brass. But they _felt_ like—

Even Uhura and Scotty clustered tight behind him, tangled with the others for...support or comfort or defense or something. Not like it would have helped. Whatever these women were, sticking close wouldn't be enough to save them if this went south. Jim had never felt so much power so distilled, and that was what he could pick up _without_ pulling shadows up out of his core.

"Would you look at that," Pavel said wonderingly, pressed up close to Jim—to his sire. "What are they?"

"And why aren't they saying anything?" Uhura added in a low murmur.

Jim pulled up his darkness, passing a layer over Spock as well, and looked back at the women.

One of them looked unchanged: dark hair just starting to have streaks of grey, an unremarkable face, eyes black as space. The other had lost twenty or thirty years, all the wrinkles and grey melted right off, until she was as young or younger than any of them. The third had stooped, frail with age, hair white as bones, as close to a skeleton as Jim had seen since his last appointment with Dr. Wentworth. Spock felt his shock and rummaged through his memory for understanding just as the others began to realize what it was they were seeing.

"Maiden, Mother, and Crone," Bones said, managing to make the observation sound like a curse.

"The Fates," Hikaru breathed. "Holy _shit."_

"We want," they said again, in such utter unison it might as well have been a single person, "to offer you a commendation."

"What," Jim said hoarsely.

The youngest Fate leaned forward, eyes warm with mirth. "Com-men-da-tion," she enunciated slowly.

" _Why_?"

Spock pinched his hip in subtle discouragement: Do not antagonize the unimaginably powerful supernatural beings.

Right.

"Sorry," Jim managed, trying to straighten back up into something more like proper form. "Uh. A commendation for what?"

The Mother made a dismissive gesture. "Oh, we'll figure out what to call it later. We certainly can't say what it's _actually_ for, can we?" She produced a pair of elegant opera glasses to peer at him. "You hacked the Kobayashi not long ago, didn't you? Then let's say creative thinking, shall we?"

"Excellent idea," the Crone agreed, voice worn with age. She pointed a gnarled finger at them. "It even has the benefit of being true: You are _quite_ an unusual thinker, James Tiberius Kirk."

"I have some questions," Scotty said. Uhura slapped a hand over his mouth with a hissed _later._

"I, also," Spock said, "have questions."

"Yeah," Jim agreed. "Starting with: What the _fuck._ "

The Mother leaned on one arm of her chair, propping her chin in her hand. "Well, we'll need _something_ to fast-track you to captain."

"What," said most of Jim's crew.

"Something official," she continued, eyes focused on Jim's like lasers. "Since we can't use 'led a grep of renegade cadets on a mission to save Vulcan and the world by removing an extra monkey's paw from our reality via the outright theft of a still-experimental Starfleet vessel'. One might say your creative thinking was so far outside the box, you were basically in a world without boxes."

"I am so confused," Hikaru said. "And also suspicious."

"Listen, we know you." The Maiden gestured to include all of them. "We admire your work. Not just what you've done as students, but while you were in New York, too."

"Not _just_ New York, of course," the Crone said, leaning over the Mother to pat the Maiden's forearm.

The Maiden nodded. "Of course," she said in unison with the Mother. "You've done work all over," they said, "and we've admired all of it."

"Most of it," the Crone amended.

"Yes, most of it," they agreed.

Jim flailed his hands through the air. "Wait!" he demanded. "Please," he added quickly when they looked at him with all the power of Fate behind them. "Can you please explain what's going on a _lot_ slower? Pretend I'm, just, indescribably confused. I thought we were going to be charged with treason and thrown in prison!"

"And then broken out of prison," Pavel said with a nod, "by a werewolf and a vampire at minimum."

"And then live our lives on the run," Scotty said around Uhura's hand, "defeating monsters or something."

Jim looked pained. "I work with...really, really optimistic people."

"Be realistic, Jim," Spock said, hands tucked placidly at the small of his back. "The probability of us being tried and sent to prison is not functionally at zero."

"I deeply distrust the way you phrased that," Bones muttered.

"Because," Spock continued without pause, "this being, whom I believe Sulu called _the Fates,_ has clearly elected to use us toward its own purpose in the future."

"Oh man," Hikaru whispered, his cringe apparent just in the way he spoke. "Maybe please don't refer to the Fates as an it. You are going to get us smited."

"Smote," Uhura said reflexively.

" _Whatever,_ " Hikaru hissed.

"That would be a terrible waste of talent," the Mother said, mouth curving into a grin. "It's not only Jim we're after."

"Not only Jim you're after for _what?"_ Jim demanded.

"To work for them," Spock said. "Of course."

"We've seen your destiny, James Kirk," the Fates said as one, "and the destiny of those whose lives have been woven with yours. You are meant to do as you have been, fixing the Other, saving those you can, stopping those you cannot."

"Then why are you keeping me at Starfleet?" he asked.

"Does the Other begin and end on Terra?" the Crone asked, one eyebrow ticked in challenge. "What was it you fought on Tarsus?"

Jim shuddered. "That's not how I want to spend my life," he said, eyes dropping to the ground as fear worked its way under his skin. He jerked a hand back toward the others. "That's not what I want for _them._ If the choice is Tarsus forever or prison—"

"Do you assume there will be no selkies in space?" the Maiden asked. "That we will send you to battle with Beldams and the Tarsus creature but deny you encounters with unicorns and ? That you will never again have need to negotiate with vampires and werewolves at war?"

"Does the Other begin and end on Terra?" they asked as one.

"We've needed an Other team for a long time," the Mother admitted. "But it's—more difficult than you might think to put one together."

"Other beings are creatures of habit," the Maiden said. "They do not want to move or change, and that includes going to space. But you, Jim." She spread her hands to encompass his team. "You've put a command crew together without even drying."

"You have always had the hand of destiny upon you," the Crone said with a smile. "Perhaps now you begin to understand why."

Jim looked at Spock, then back at his crew, then around to the Fates. He touched Spock's thoughts through their bond, checking to see if he'd figured out the gimmick. "So what's the catch?" he asked.

The Fates tilted their heads as one. "This is not a trick," they said. "This is a mission."

"You will not be removed from Starfleet Academy and thrown into prison," the Maiden said.

"You will graduate with honors and captain a ship within five years," the Mother said.

"You will gather your crew back together and explore the stars," the Crone said.

"Specifically," they continued, "those stars with Other troubles."

"To save and be saved," Spock murmured. "As you have done since before I met you."

"I can't make that decision for my crew," Jim objected. He twisted around to face them. "I don't have the right—"

"I'm in," Hikaru said.

"Me too," Uhura and Scotty said in unison. Uhura finally lowered her hand to wipe it on Scotty's shirt and then give him a high-five.

Pavel shrugged his shoulders when Jim turned to him. "I will go with my sire. To prison. To the stars. To war, or peace, or exploration. I will go with my sire, or not at all."

"If you think I'm going to let you out of my sight for one minute," Bones began, hands on his hips.

"My only condition," Spock said to the Fates ("Nobody gives the Fates conditions," Hikaru hissed frantically to Pavel, who patted him on the shoulder.), "is that I serve with Jim, until I serve under him as my captain. I will not be parted from him."

"We don't break up married couples," the Crone chuckled.

The Maiden flicked a hand toward Bones, who had been swelling with outrage even since Spock cut him off. "The doctor, too, will stay close."

"My sired might also want to serve with me," Jim pointed out.

"I do not need to be directly beside you every moment of the day," Pavel protested. He linked an arm through Hikaru's. "As long as I work with people who know what I am—who are not afraid of me, and can help me from becoming hungry—then it might be a nice adventure, to try on my own."

"You can't survive _just_ on Hikaru," Jim protested.

"We know how vampires work, Jim Kirk," the Mother said, laughter in her voice. "And we have more say in the operations of Starfleet than you realize."

"Kirk and McCoy and Spock will serve together," the Crone said. "Uhura and Chekov and Sulu will serve together."

"Scott is not a cadet," the Maiden said, "and cannot work up through the ranks with you."

Scotty wilted, then tried to look positive. "Don't worry about me," he told them with a brave smile. "I'll keep myself busy and, uh, out of trouble until we can meet up again."

"Admirable," the Fates said, layers of laughter in their voices.

"But perhaps you will settle for being assigned to engineer on the ships where you compatriots serve," the Maiden said. "We can split your time fairly evenly, if you like."

While Scott was beaming and knocking shoulders with the others, Spock's head tilted in thought. "How is it you have such control over our assignments?" he asked.

"We are the Fates," they said.

"Even if we hadn't served Starfleet since its inception," the crone said, "it isn't difficult to know who to place where for an advantageous promotion."

"Fair," Jim said with a nod.

"You will serve together as the bridge bridge crew of the Starfleet flagship _Enterprise_ before five years are done," they said. A shiver of...something—inevitability, or longing, or the sensation of waking up to a dream knowing it would come true—passed through them, traveling along the web Jim and Spock had woven between all their minds.

"So it is spoken," Hikaru murmured, making a sign for luck that his grandmother had taught him.

"So mote it be," Bones said, touching the back of Jim's neck to seal the blessing.

"Kit will be your Ship's Cat," the Crone said, cackling at Jim's embarrassed expression. "We'll make sure she can stay with you, so don't bother hiding her in your room next time."

"We so rarely get company," the Maiden sighed. "Bring her along when we call you again."

Jim grinned and bowed his head. "So mote it be," he agreed.

…

Five years later, Jim strode onto the bridge of the Enterprise, Spock at his shoulder, Kit trotting by his feet. The ship was crewed by a startling number of Other creatures, intrigued by the prospect of serving—safely—off-world. Jim had done more to bring Other into the modern era than any Terran before him, an ambassador simply by virtue of doing what he did while being what he was.

Pavel had a hand in that too, of course. Vampires saw the stories of his unbelievable exploits and joined Starfleet in droves. It helped, of course, that Bones had figured out a way to synthesize a blood-substitute that met the average vampires both physical and metaphysical need, freeing the entire species from their timeless bonds. Unsurprisingly, vampires made excellent members of Starfleet. They were strong and fast and capable, hard to injure, quick to heal. The Fates kept them contained on the ships already crewed by Jim's people, and they flourished.

Their success drew werewolves and witches and other creatures, such that by the time Jim was set to take command of the _Enterprise,_ nearly thrity percent of his subordinates were Other of some kind. Bones had a three-day rant about having to be CMO for people with so many different needs, many of them strictly off-book. But he prepared all the while, stocking up on herbs and crystals hypos, with a note of curiosity about the entire effort that even he couldn't hide.

After a private conversation, the Fates sent Scott to the _Enterprise_ six months before anyone else was set to arrive. He made firm friends with her in that time and promised to introduce Jim properly once he had command.

Jim stepped onto the bridge. Pike was waiting for him, smile wry and proud. "I relieve you," Jim said, salute sharp as the horizon.

"I am relieved," Pike said. He wished Jim luck, took Number One, and left Jim to the ship.

"Welcome aboard, Captain," Uhura said from her station, smile teasing and bright.

"It's good to be here," Jim laughed.

Kit hopped up onto his seat. She couldn't tease him, not with so many people around who hadn't yet figured out the secret of cats, but the way she flicked her tail said enough.

Bones stepped out of the turbolift. "Well?" he demanded, hands on his hips. "Come on! You owe me a physical."

"Soon," Jim promised.

"It is good to see you, sir," Pavel said from his spot beside Hikaru.

"We've got a little welcome aboard party planned," Hikaru ordered. "Just something small, to start off on the right foot."

The comm on Jim's chair buzzed. "We're ready to go when you are, Captain," Scott said. "Admiral Pike and his group are safely back aboard the station. We're cleared to leave."

"I have the briefing for our next assignment," Spock said. "I can deliver it at your convenience."

Jim pet a hand over Kit's head, so full of love and joy that, for a moment, he couldn't speak. "Mr. Sulu," he said at last.

"Aye, sir," Hikaru said, smile clear in his tone.

Kit got up onto the back of the captain's chair, making space for Jim to sit. Spock came to stand by his right hand; Bones stood at his left.

"Take us out," Jim said.

…

And so it was.

The End


End file.
